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.’
The Stair Society’s 2026 Annual General Meeting will be held in the Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 14 November 2026 by courtesy of the Faculty of Advocates. For members, the business part of the meeting will take place from 10:30 to 11:00 am, after which tea and