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.’
1982
Dr John Imrie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland and Chairman of the Society
1981
1980
1979
The Hon Lord Mackenzie Stuart, Judge of the European Court of Justice
1978
Professor A W B Simpson, University of Kent
1977
Professor Peter Stein, Regius Professor of Civil Law and Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge
1976
Professor Joe McKnight, Professor of Law at the Southern Methodist University and Director of the Family Law Review Project for Texas
1975
1974
Professor E L G Stones, University of Glasgow

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