Law and Opinion in Scotland during the Seventeenth Century

Scots law in the seventeenth century was important—not just as a thorny question in discussions of Anglo-Scottish union, but also in its own right as an aspect of Scottish governance and intellectual life. The central figure in the story has always been Sir James Dalrymple of Stair (1619–95), who in 1690 became the first Viscount Stair. His book, Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1681), was hugely influential, the most systematic account of Scots law that had yet been produced. But what was the nature of that influence, and why should Stair's ‘opinion’ about the law have helped to shape the law itself? J.D. Ford's thoroughly-researched book addresses these questions. The book's title is a difficult one. A broad title for it (but perhaps too broad) might have been The Nature of Law in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. A narrower but still possible title might have been Aspects of the Making of Stair's ‘Institutions’. The central question that it pursues is something like: ‘What was Stair doing when he wrote his Institutions?’ Or, more precisely: ‘What did Stair intend people to think that he was doing when he wrote his Institutions?’ And the question of ‘when Stair wrote’ is complicated; the book divides this into distinct periods. Stair initially learned his law in the revolutionary 1640s, wrote most of his book in the Cromwellian 1650s, revised it during the Restoration period (both in the 1660s and for publication in 1681), and revised it again for a second edition in the revolutionary 1690s. All these periods receive attention, with careful study of the manuscripts of Stair and others. This periodising approach is a benefit to the historian. The book is certainly addressed to historians as much as to lawyers; one negative indication of this is that it does not cite cases in legal form, and sees no need for tables of cases or statutes

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