The Stair Society: Scotland’s Legal History Society

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2024 Stair Society Annual Lecture

The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting will be held in the Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 16 November 2024 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 prior to the Annual Lecture.

At 11:30 am Professor Cynthia Neville will give the Annual Lecture. Her title is ‘March Law as Auld Law in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Legal Traditions’.

Professor Neville is Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is also Adjunct Professor of History, Centre for Scottish Studies, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

A synopsis of Professor Neville’s lecture is as follows:

‘Historians have long been familiar with the text known as Leges Marchiarum (Laws of the Marches), the earliest extant version of which is found in the National Records of Scotland’s Berne Manuscript, datable to the period 1267 x 1272. In the late medieval and early modern periods the kings of Scotland and the jurists who studied, interpreted, and wrote the law on their behalf came to regard the Leges Marchiarum treatise as a fundamental witness to the early development of written law in the medieval kingdom.

‘This lecture is based on an ongoing study of some twenty-one extant manuscript versions of the Leges Marchiarum treatise, beginning with its first instantiation in the Berne Manuscript and continuing with a discussion of its later witnesses in compilations of auld Scots law down to the 1590s. Seventeen of the texts are in Latin; the remaining four in Older Scots.

‘The lecture discusses, first, the background to the drafting of the treatise in the thirteenth century, then moves to a review of the textual additions, accretions and alterations made to the text over this long period, paying particular attention to the legal and political circumstances under which the compilers of books of auld law effected these changes.

‘The lecture explores briefly the means by which the early modern authors of vernacular Scots lawbooks coped with the challenges inherent in translating the archaic Latin legal terminology of the Leges Marchiarum treatise, and finishes with an examination of the ways in which the little thirteenth-century treatise retained its fundamental authority, not only among Scottish jurists, but also among the Scottish officials who worked on behalf of the crown in the Scottish march lands.’

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.

Volumes for sale

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.

2023 Stair Society Annual Lecture

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.

2023 Stair Society publication

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 Stair Society website

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.

2024 Stair Society Annual Lecture

The Stair Society’s Annual General Meeting will be held in the Mackenzie Building, Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh on Saturday 16 November 2024 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

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