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Pleadable Brieves, Pleading and the Development of Scots Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Hector L. MacQueen
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Extract

Until recently there was a depressing consensus about Scottish legal history in the medieval and early modern periods. It was accepted that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Scots had gone some way to building a legal system on the model found in contemporary England, involving the holding of courts in the localities by sheriffs and justiciars on ayres, the use of royal writs or brieves to commence litigations, and the determination of cases by juries or assizes. The fullest account of Scottish law, Regiam Majestatem, was based on the twelfth century English text Glanvill. The wars and other skirmishes with England which began in 1296 and continued into the sixteenth century brought an end to the development of the ‘Scoto-Norman’law and legal system however. Cut off from its basic inspiration and lacking either a central court structure or a legal profession, Scots law regressed throughout the later middle ages. Demands for better justice led the king by the end of the fifteenth century to establish a group of royal councillors to hold judicial sessions or sittings at which such complaints might be heard. The councillors—the lords of council and session—might be either ecclesiastics or laymen; the former were more numerous and possessed greater legal skills. The procedure of the emerging court thus followed that of the ecclesiastical courts and the substantive law which developed was also canonical and civilian in character. By the mid-sixteenth century the Session was established as the main civil court in Scotland and Scots law had made a fresh start, severed from its original roots.

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Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 1986 , pp. 403 - 422
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1986

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References

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29. S.R.O., Crown Office Writs, call no. AD 1/60.

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42. Published by the Scottish Text Society in three volumes (Edinburgh, 1920-26). See the introduction: vol. iii: 62-70.

43. See Regiam Majestatem Bk. I: chs. 10 and 11; Quoniam Attachiamenta ch. 35.

44. APS i: 470-71, chs. 14-16.

45. APS ii: 17, ch. 3.

46. APS ii: 17-18, chs. 1-7.

47. APS ii: 10, ch. 10.

48. See the appendix to this article.

49. APS i: 505 and supra, 406.

50. P. & M. ii: 616.

51. Willock, Jury, 119-21.

52. Ibid. at 122-32.

53. Ibid. at 127-28.

54. Ibid. at 126-27.

55. APS ii: 252, ch. 22.

56. Ibid. at ii: 253, ch. 40.

57. For the cases see e.g. ADA 48-49, 54, 59, 124* and Thomson, T., ed., Acta Dominorum Concilii I: The Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes 1478-1496 (Edinburgh, 1839Google Scholar), thereinafter: ADC i]. For the act of parliament see APS ii: 100, ch. 9, and supra, 404.

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61. See e.g. a case of c. 1476 recorded in Fraser, W.The Lennox, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1874) ii, no. 72Google Scholar where dilatory exceptions against the judge, court, brieve, day, place, petition and the points of the brieve were proposed against a brieve of inquest; also ADA, 14, 19, 44, 74 and ADC i: 10, 212, 223 and 243.

62. Regiam Majestatem Bk. I, ch. 10; APS i: 471, ch. 19.

63. Quoniam Attachiamenta ch. 34, 36 and 40.

64. APS i: 505.

65. P. & M., ii: 609.

66. APS i. 471.

67. Ibid. at i: 470-71, and supra, 43.

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71. See the appendix to this article.

72. S.R.O., Crown Office Writs, call no. AD 1/60.

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74. See the references in ADA, index, ‘Dilator defences or exceptions’and ‘Exceptions’; ADC i: index, ‘Dilatory exceptions’.

75. Donaldson, G., ‘The Legal Profession in Scottish Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Juridical Review xxi (1976) 1–17Google Scholar at 8.

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78. Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, supra note 17 at 122. The comment is made of the Scottish justiciar, another medieval import from England, but could be applied to many other Scottish institutions and legal rules dating from this period.

79. See Cooper, T.M., ‘The Dark Age of Scottish Legal History’, supra note 1 at 231-32Google Scholar and Donaldson, G., ‘Legal Profession’, supra note 75 at 7.Google Scholar