The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting will be held in Edinburgh on Saturday 16 November 2024. The speaker this year will be Professor Cynthia Neville, Dalhousie University, Canada. Further details to follow in due course.
The Society has been contacted by an Edinburgh-based seller who has Stair Society volumes 1 to 52 (excluding 45, 46, 47 & 49) to sell.
They would prefer to sell all in one transaction, but offers for individual volumes would be considered. The price is negotiable. Expressions of interest can be made to: stairsociety@gmail.com.
The Stair Society has made available in its Open Access Manuscripts section in partnership with Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums the newly digitised copy of the Roll of the Burgh Courts of Aberdeen, August–October 1317, the oldest surviving roll produced by a court in Scotland to document its proceedings, apart from parliament.
The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting will be held in the
Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 18 November 2023 by courtesy of the Faculty of Advocates.
For members, the business part of the meeting will take place
from 10:30 to 11:00am, after which tea and coffee will be served
prior to the Annual Lecture.
At 11:30am Professor Catharine MacMillan will give the Annual
Lecture. Her title is Making the Imperial Tribunal more truly
imperial in its constitution: the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council and colonial judges.
Professor MacMillan is Professor of Private Law at the Dickson
Poon School of Law at King’s College London, an Honorary
Professor at Edinburgh Law School, and Immediate Past
President of the Society of Legal Scholars. Her topic explores an
area of law which has not had a great deal of attention, namely
the functioning of the Judicial Committee as an imperial court,
and, in particular, the composition of that tribunal and the
inclusion of Dominion and colonial judges. The title of the
lecture is a nod to Lord Rosebery’s description of the Judicial
Committee Amendment Act of 1895. The lecture will reflect
new archival research.
The lecture is not restricted to members of the Society, but non
members wishing to attend are asked to advise the Secretary and
Treasurer in advance of their intention to attend.
Volume 69 was published in April 2023 as David Chalmers of Ormond, Compendium of the Laws of Scotland, edited by Winifred Coutts, Julian Goodare and Andrew R. C. Simpson. Completed in 1566, this work is little known but constitutes the first comprehensive survey of Scots law ever written. Dedicated to Queen Mary, it gathers and summarises a large number of laws from different sources, and presents them in a systematic format.
The author, David Chalmers of Ormond (c. 1529-1592), was a Scots lawyer and judge – a senator of the College of Justice – who had studied at the universities of Paris, Louvain and Bologna. His book has never been published before, but a single manuscript is held by the British Library upon which this edition is based. The volume reproduces Chalmers’ entire text, and adds an editorial commentary to each of his 1,595 chapters. The edition will introduce Chalmers’ book to a modern readership, enabling readers to recognise its importance as a pioneering work of sixteenth-century Scots law.
Welcome to the new version of The Stair Society website. We’ve redesigned the site to freshen the design and ensure it can be viewed on mobile browsing devices.
We have transferred all of the content, including Lectures and Publications from the previous site, and have introduced an Open Access section highlighting content publicly available. New members can now join the Society online using a secure PayPal online payments facility.
The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting will be held in theMackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 18 November 2023 by courtesy of the Faculty of Advocates. For members, the business part of the meeting will take placefrom 10:30 to 11:00am, after which tea and coffee will be servedprior
