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CONCESSIONARY SUBSCRIPTION RATES

The Society wishes to foster an increased interest in Scottish legal history amongst students, trainee and recently qualified lawyers and other young professionals and is extending the concessionary subscription rates which have until now been available to students for a three year period. The concession is now available to students at schools, colleges of further education and other similar colleges who will attain the age of 17 or more during the year of membership, to undergraduate and postgraduate students at universities and other institutions of higher education and to persons undertaking training for professional qualifications. It can be obtained for the period of the study or training undertaken plus the three subscription years following the conclusion of study or training, after which membership at full subscription will be offered automatically.

The concessionary subscription is at the rate of GPB 15 per annum for members resident in the United Kingdom and GBP 20 per annum for those resident overseas, in each case subject to periodic review. The concession is available to new members with immediate effect and to existing student members from 1 April 2012.

PUBLICATIONS

The Society's latest publication is Scottish Formularies, edited by Professor A A M Duncan. The title of this collection indicates a different substance than the title of the first study of them, Lord Cooper's Register of Brieves, 1286-1386 (Stair Society, vol 10, 1946), prepared in wartime when access to records and manuscripts was severely limited. There are many brieves in the present collection the styles of which (and the accounts given of them in such treatises as Regiam Majestatem and Quoniam Attachiamenta) are amply borne out as practical realities by other sources, mostly of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But there are also many texts which would have little, some no, relevance to any action at law. The formularies are as much a political as a legal register, from a period when parliamentary acts were to acquire the force of statutes and gradually to displace the auld laws. The six manuscripts from which the formulary parts are edited here range in date from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. They are a rich source for the socio-economic and political as much as the legal history of Scotland, throwing invaluable light on the mechanisms of diplomacy and trade. To Professor Duncan's introductory matter and annotations is added a short but specifically legal commentary by the Society's Literary Director, to provide further context for the formularies as a whole, and to expand upon their significance as a source for the legal history of Scotland.

AGM and ANNUAL LECTURE

The Society's 76th Annual General Meeting was held in the Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, on Saturday 5 November 2011, when the annual lecture was given by Professor Nial Osborough, Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence and Legal History at University College Dublin. His title was "Law at the Edge: Legal Encounters on a Maritime Periphery", an intellectual itinerary with principal stop-overs at Rousay, Tiree and Colonsay, and at Great Saltees, Skellig Michael, Great Blasket and Arranmore. The 77th AGM will be held in Edinburgh on Saturday 17 November 2012, when the annual lecture will be given by Professor Norma Dawson, Professor of Law, Queen's University, Belfast, and President of the Irish Legal History Society. Further details will be published in September.

The Stair Society is registered as a Scottish Charity (number SCO15283). It was founded in 1934 to encourage the study and advance the knowledge of the history of Scots Law by the publication of original documents and by the reprinting and editing of works of sufficient rarity or importance. Since 1934 it has produced nearly 60 volumes, aiming to publish a volume each year (although this is not guaranteed). At its Annual Meeting each November a distinguished Lecturer is invited to give an address, which is followed by lunch for members and their guests. In making knowledge of the past readily accessible and fulfilling its objectives, the Society depends on the support of Scottish lawyers, both advocates and solicitors, and on legal historians throughout the world, as well as upon libraries and institutions.