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Biography
Pamela Ferguson was Professor of Scots Law from 2000 to 2025. She was previously a Senior Lecturer in the Law School (from 1995-1999), and a Lecturer (1989-1995).
Professor Ferguson was a member of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service from 1986-1989. She was an examiner for the Law Society of Scotland for six years, and Convenor of the Law Society's Examination Board for three years.
Professor Ferguson was made an Honorary King’s Counsel in September 2026, at a ceremony in Parliament to mark the Opening of the Legal Year:
Research
Professor Ferguson's main areas of research interest are Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure. She has also undertaken research into Healthcare Law, and her doctoral thesis focused on the legal liability of doctors, pharmacists and drug manufacturers for injuries caused by pharmaceutical products. This work resulted in her first monograph: Drug Injuries and the Pursuit of Compensation (Sweet & Maxwell, 1996).
In 1997 she was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellowship and used this opportunity to undertake an empirical research project which explored legal and ethical aspects of clinical trials for new drugs. Other aspects of healthcare law which she has researched include consent to treatment, medical negligence, abortion, and euthanasia. Professor Ferguson's criminal law interests include procedural and evidential aspects of criminal law, as well as substantive criminal law. She is one of the authors of the Draft Criminal Code for Scotland with Commentary, published by the Scottish Law Commission in 2003. More recent books include Scots Criminal Law: A Critical Analysis (EUP, 2014, with C McDiarmid) and Breach of the Peace (DUP, 2013). She was a member of the Academic Expert Group, appointed by Lord Bonomy to consider alternatives to corroboration in criminal trials and was subsequently appointed by the Scottish Government to the Post-Corroboration Safeguards Review.