Stair Society Publications Directory

This sixteenth-century text has never been published before, but is the first comprehensive survey of Scots law ever written.

The first modern critical edition of the single most important text of medieval Scots law, presenting royal authority in the early fourteenth century and describing jurisdiction, law and procedure in the king’s courts.

The eighth Stair Society Miscellany volume.

A modern compilation of Scotland’s ‘auld lawes’, some of the earliest legal compilations to have survived from Scotland.

Alexander King’s neglected treatise on Scots maritime law provides a reliable and interesting guide to the sea law of Scotland of the sixteenth century.

This is the first of a projected three volumes providing a Latin text and facing English translation of the Jus feudale of Thomas Craig.

This volume is an annotated edition of manuscript and printed legal papers drafted or dictated by James Boswell in cases that he was involved in during the period from 12 November 1767 to 11 November 1769. It continues the exploration of Boswell’s legal papers that Milne published as the Society’s 60th volume in 2013.

The seventh Stair Society Miscellany volume.

In this volume, Dr Green presents decisions of the Commissary Court in Edinburgh concerned with marriage at a time when the Protestant Reformation meant that spiritual jurisdiction over such matters was unclear. Green describes the situation in his Introduction which also includes brief biographies of the first four Commissioners: James Balfour. Edward Henryson, Clement Litill, and Robert Maitland.

This volume is an annotated edition of manuscript and printed legal papers drafted or dictated by the famous literary figure James Boswell in cases in which he first became involved as an advocate during the period from 29 July 1766 to 11 November 1767.

Matters Criminal was first published in 1678. It was almost completely superseded by Hume’s Commentaries on the Law of Scotland respecting Crimes (1800) but Mackenzie provided the concepts and framework on which Hume built.

The title of this collection indicates a different substance than the title of the first study of them, Lord Cooper’s Register of Brieves, 1286-1386 (Stair Society, vol 10, 1946), prepared in wartime when access to records and manuscripts was severely limited.

Scotland under Jus Commune is a census of manuscripts of legal literature in Scotland, mainly between 1500 and 1660. The work catalogues and gives details of a large number of Scots law manuscripts from a period when relatively few legal works made their way into print.

Scotland under Jus Commune is a census of manuscripts of legal literature in Scotland, mainly between 1500 and 1660. The work catalogues and gives details of a large number of Scots law manuscripts from a period when relatively few legal works made their way into print.

Scotland under Jus Commune is a census of manuscripts of legal literature in Scotland, mainly between 1500 and 1660. The work catalogues and gives details of a large number of Scots law manuscripts from a period when relatively few legal works made their way into print.

The sixth miscellany volume of The Stair Society.

This publication continues the work of publishing the Faculty of Advocates’ Minute Books begun by the Stair Society in 1976. The document now reproduced as The Minute book of the Faculty of Advocates, Volume 4, 1783-1798  is a folio manuscript book listed as FR 3 in the Dickson inventory of Faculty Records lodged for safe-keeping in the National Library of Scotland.

At the start of researching this study into written pleadings, the writer wanted to answer three questions. First, what was originally meant by “written pleadings” in Scots law? Second, how was it that written pleadings and the rules of written pleadings arose? Third, and probably influenced by the zeigeist of the late 1990s, the writer wanted to explore whether modern Scottish civil procedure was in need of reform, and whether the system of written pleadings as traditionally practised would continue to play a part.

Contributors: G W S Barrow, H L MacQueen, J W Cairns, Peter McNeill, A F Stewart, A D M Forte, A L Murray, David R Parratt, D J Cusine, R H Helmholz, James Chalmers, Thomas H Drysdale.

A historical and comparative study of the treatment of compulsion in Scottish private law with particular emphasis on its relevance to the law of restitution or unjustified enrichment.