In Britain at least, changes in the law are expected to be made by the enactment of statutes or the decision of cases by senior judges. Lawyers express opinions about the law but do not expect their opinions to form part of the law. It was not always so. This book explores the relationship between the opinions expressed by lawyers and the development of the law of Scotland in the century preceding the parliamentary union with England in 1707, when it was decided that the private law of Scotland was sufficiently distinctive and coherent to be worthy of preservation. Credit for this surprising decision, which has resulted in the survival of two separate legal systems in Britain, has often been given to the first Viscount Stair, whose Institutions of the Law of Scotland had appeared in a revised edition in 1693. The present book places Stair's treatise in historical context and asks whether it could have been his intention in writing to express the type of authoritative opinions that could have been used to consolidate the emerging law, and whether he could have been motivated in writing by a desire to clarify the relationship between the laws of Scotland and England. In doing so the book provides a fresh account of the literature and practice of Scots law in its formative period and at the same time sheds light on the background to the 1707 union. It will be of interest to legal historians and Scots lawyers, but it should also be accessible to lay readers who wish to know more about the law and legal history of Scotland

A multi-disciplinary approach to two of the most important legal institutions of the Middle Ages. The wars waged by the English in France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to the need for judicial agencies which could deal with disputes that arose on land and sea, beyond the reach of indigenous laws. This led to the jurisdictional development of the Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty, presiding over respectively heraldic and maritime disputes. They were thus of considerable importance in the Middle Ages; but they have attracted comparatively little scholarly attention. The essays here examine their officers, proceedings and the wider cultural and political context in which they had jurisdiction and operated in later medieval Western Europe. They reveal similarities in personnel, institutions and outlook, as well as in the issues confronting rulers in territories across Europe. They also demonstrate how assertions of sovereignty and challenges to judicial competence were inextricably linked to complex political agendas; and that both military and maritime law were international in reach because they were underpinned by trans-national customs and the principles and procedures of Continental civil law. Combininglaw with military and maritime history, and discussing the art and material culture of chivalric disputes as well as their associated heraldry, the volume provides fresh new insights into an important area of medieval life and culture. ANTHONY MUSSON is Head of Research at Historic Royal Palaces; NIGEL RAMSAY is Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at University College London. Contributors: Andrew Ayton, Richard Barber, John Ford, Laurent Hablot, Thomas K. Heeboll-Holm, Julian Luxford, Ralph Moffat, Philip Morgan, Bertrand Schnerb, Anne F. Sutton, Lorenzo Tanzini.

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