2003
Dr Athol Murray, former Keeper of the Records of Scotland
Stair Society, Miscellany V (vol 52) 103-131
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.’
2002
Professor Reinhard Zimmermann, Director, Max-Planck Institute for Foreign Private Law and International Law, Hamburg
Published as ‘Introduction’, R Zimmerman, D Visser and K Reid (eds), Mixed Legal Systems in Comparative Perspective: Property and Obligations in Scotland and South America (Oxford University Press 2004)
2001
Professor Alan Watson, University of Georgia, USA
Stair Society Miscellany IV (vol 49) 243-254
2000
Professor Gero Dolezalek, Professor of Private Law, Roman Law and the History of Church Law, University of Leipzig
Stair Society Miscellany IV (vol 49) 51-84
1999
Professor W M Gordon, former Literary Director of the Society
Edinburgh Law Review vol 5 (2) 130-144
1998
Sheriff J Irvine Smith, Vice President of the Society
1997
W D H Sellar, former Literary Director of the Society
Edinburgh Law Review vol 4 (1) 3-18
1996
Professor Brian Levack, Professor of History at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Stair Society Miscellany IV (vol 49) 185-198
1995
Dr John Durkan, Department of Scottish History, University of Glasgow
1994
The Rt Hon Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Advocate, later Lord President and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
2025 Stair Society AGM and Annual Lecture
The Stair Society’s 90th Annual General Meeting will be held in the Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 15 November 2025 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 coffee will be served