Rhetoric, Language, and Roman Law: Legal Education and Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

Education in law in the Scottish universities has a continuous history only from the early eighteenth century. In 1707, the regius professorship of public law and the law of nature and nations was founded in Edinburgh, to be followed in 1710 and 1722 by professorships in civil (Roman) and Scots law respectively. In the University of Glasgow, the regius professorship of civil law was established in late 1713 and first filled in 1714. These developments were not entirely novel. Throughout the seventeenth century, there had been regular, if unsuccessful, attempts to create university chairs in law. While the background to the foundation of the university chairs requires further careful study, we may note that, by at least around 1690, it was thought desirable to introduce the teaching of both civil and Scots law, though the notion of teaching both does go back at least as far as the First Book of Discipline of 1561. After the visitation of the University of Edinburgh that resulted from the political and religious settlements of 1688–89, it was proposed to establish a single professorship to teach both civil and Scots law. This proposal in the late seventeenth century is in line with general developments throughout Europe. Nothing, however, was done, probably because no person or body was willing to finance a chair.

Rhetoric, Language, and Roman Law: Legal Education and Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
University Professors ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Practice Of Teaching

This chapter examines how the development of theories of rhetoric affected styles of law teaching in eighteenth-century Scotland, leading to the development of the practice of teaching in the English language rather than in Latin. The transition from Latin to English raised difficulties for the central university legal discipline of Civil Law, which was covered in two courses, one on Justinian's Institutes and the other on Justinian's Digest. The chapter analyses the change to teaching in English, the reaction against it by the Faculty of Advocates, and Professor John Wilde's resumption of teaching the course on the Digest in Latin in the 1790s. It also considers issues arising out of rivalry and competition for students between the professors in the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow and between the university professors and private teachers.

The First Edinburgh Chair in Law: Grotius and the Scottish Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

This chapter examines the development of teaching from the chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on the intellectual content of the classes and the politics of professorial appointments. For the first half-century, law teaching from the chair was intermittent. However, this does not mean that the holder was incapable or unlearned. When the holder of the chair did teach, the class was based on Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis libri tres. The chapter first provides an overview of legal education in Scottish universities before profiling the law professors who were appointed to the new chair between 1707 and 1831, including Charles Areskine, William Kirkpatrick, George Abercromby, Robert Bruce, James Balfour, Allan Maconochie, and Robert Hamilton. Robert Bruce was the last holder of the chair to teach Grotius' natural law.

The Influence of Smith’s Jurisprudence on Legal Education in Scotland

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

This chapter examines the influence of Adam Smith's jurisprudence on legal education in Scotland. By the middle years of the eighteenth century, natural law thinking had come to dominate the moral philosophy curriculum in the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. Of primary importance in this development was Gershom Carmichael's adoption of Samuel von Pufendorf's treatise De officio hominis et civis in Glasgow in the 1690s. Following Pufendorf, Carmichael redefined moral philosophy as natural law. The chapter argues that Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence showed how law could be taught as a dynamic historical process and that he revitalised the teaching of natural law as a potential discipline for lawyers. It explains how Smith turned natural law from an abstract ahistorical discipline into a concrete, historical explanation and critique of law.

The Legacy of Smith’s Jurisprudence in Late Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh

2019 ◽  
pp. 278-305
Author(s):  
John W. Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Universal History ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

The chapter explores the development of law teaching in the University of Edinburgh in the later eighteenth-century, showing how Adam Smith's thinking promoted the development by law professors, all linked to Henry Dundas, of an empirical and historically oriented attitude to law and government in the teaching of Civil Law, the Law of Nature and Nations, Scots Law, and Universal History. This development had a major impact on Scottish thinking about law and government, not just among the lawyers. It raises the possibility of a route for the continuing impact of Enlightenment thought into the Nineteenth Century.

Academic Feud, Bloodfeud, and William Welwood: Legal Education in St Andrews, 1560–1611-Part I

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Joint Meeting ◽  
Academic Education

This article, in earlier versions presented as a paper to the Edinburgh Roman Law Group on 10 December 1993 and to the joint meeting of the London Roman Law Group and London Legal History Seminar on 7 February 1997, addresses the puzzle of the end of law teaching in the Scottish universities at the start of the seventeenth century at the very time when there was strong pressure for the advocates of the Scots bar to have an academic education in Civil Law. It demonstrates that the answer is to be found in the life of William Welwood, the last Professor of Law in St Andrews, while making some general points about bloodfeud in Scotland, the legal culture of the sixteenth century, and the implications of this for Scottish legal history. It is in two parts, the second of which will appear in the next issue of the Edinburgh Law Review.

scholarly journals XII.—Memoir of the Life and Writings of Robert Whytt, M.D., Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh from 1747 to 1766.

1862 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Seller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Busy Period ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Biographical Dictionary ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
At Home

It does not always happen that the memory of inquirers into nature, who have the merit or the fortune to strike first into a right path, is cherished as it deserves. This remark applies forcibly to the eminent person, whether regarded as a physiologist or as a physician, of whose life aud labours a brief memoir is now laid before the Society. The name of Robert Whytt was familiar to his contemporaries both at home and abroad. Increase of distance should hardly yet have dimmed its lustre. Yet, in proportion as the views which he initiated have expanded more and more in growing to maturity, the less and less is heard of their author. Biography—which never did Whytt great justice—begins already to put him aside. A few particulars of his life, with a catalogue of his works, have hitherto been common in books of that description, principally in those of Germany and France. In some newer French biographies his name has dropped out. But of a late Edinburgh Biographical Dictionary, extending to not a few volumes, while restricted to the lives of eminent Scotsmen, it will hardly obtain credit that an early luminary of the rising University, conspicuous among the European leaders of medical science during a busy period of the eighteenth century, should, amidst a cloud of mediocrity, be there sought for in vain.

scholarly journals RZUT OKA NA POLSKĄ ROMANISTYKĘ W PIERWSZYM DZIESIĘCIOLECIU XXI WIEKU

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Maria Zabłocka
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

An Overview of the Work of Polish Scholarship on Roman Law in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century Summary In the first decade of the 21st century Polish scholars of Roman Law accomplished a considerable amount of work, adopting an entirely new area of research. While publications on private law had constituted the predominant trend since the Second World War, especially in the first forty years of the period, articles on public law were an exception until recent times. In the last few years nearly twice as many monographs have been published on a broad range of issues in public law, such as the political system, administration, and criminal law, as on private law. The numer of articles on public law has also been much larger than on other branches of Roman law. The work of Polish Romanists has earned acknowledgement abroad, as evidenced by the invitations Polish researchers have been receiving to contribute to foreign occasional volumes, and by the digests of Polish books and articles which have appeared in the Italian scholarly journal «Iura. Rivista internazionale di diritto romano e antico».

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