Stair Society Lectures
The first occasion of an address being given at an AGM was in 1946. Professor A H Campbell, Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations in the University of Edinburgh, spoke on Jurisprudence and its Relevance to the Law of Scotland in a Historical Context.
Our Annual Lecture was inaugurated in 1965, when Jack Halliday, Professor of Conveyancing in the University of Glasgow, delivered an address entitled A Lawyer Looks at Stair.
A lecture has been delivered every year since then, as the focal point of our annual meeting. Lecturers have included, and continue to include, lawyers and legal historians of distinction from Europe and the United States as well as from Scotland and England, and many of their lecture texts have been published.
Note: Unfortunately due to misunderstandings we do not have a copy of the lecture given by Professor Catharine MacMillan in 2023 on the subject ‘Making the Imperial Tribunal more truly imperial in its constitution: the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and colonial judges.’
2022
Professor Alice Taylor, Professor of Medieval History, Kings College London
2021
2020
The Honorable Lord Stewart, former Senator of the College of Justice
2019
Professor Jørn Sunde, University of Bergen
2018
Professor Hector MacQueen, Professor of Private Law, University of Edinburgh
Alan R. Borthwick & Hector L. MacQueen, Law, Lordship and Tenure: The Fall of the Black Douglases (Strathmartine Press, St Andrews, 2022).
2017
Prof dr CH (Remco) van Rhee, Professor of European Legal History and Comparative Civil Procedure at Maastricht University
Published as ‘Case Management in Europe: A Modern Approach to Civil Litigation.’ International Journal of Procedural Law, 2018, pp. 65-84.
2016
Professor John W. Cairns, Professor of Civil Law, University of Edinburgh
2015
Lord Sumption, Justice of the UK Supreme Court
Stair Society, Miscellany VIII (vol 67) 1-12.
2014
Professor Alain Wijffels, Professor at Leuven, Kortrijk, Louvain-la-Neuve, Lille, and Leiden Universities
Published as ‘Legal authorities as instruments of conflict management: the long endgame of Anglo-Hanseatic relations (1474–1603)’ in M. Godfrey (ed), Law and Authority in British Legal History (CUP 2016).
2024 Stair Society Annual Lecture
The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting was held in the Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 16 November 2024 by courtesy of the Faculty of Advocates. It was given by Professor Cynthia Neville will give the Annual Lecture. Her title is ‘March Law as Auld Law in the