Our Legal Heritage

The Stair Society has highlighted a fascinating remnant from Edinburgh's legal past in the form of sanctuary stones, which offered safe refuge to debtors. It tweeted: "The streets of Edinburgh have some fascinating links with legal history. An example is the sanctuary stones outside Holyrood Palace.

In part two of his reflection on the life of Henry Dundas, Chris Holme retells the episode that would be his undoing, see part one here. It was a banking scandal on an epic scale involving flagrant misuse of public funds and fearless investigators.

Chris Holme looks at the life of Henry Dundas, a controversial figure who has come under scrutiny this year in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. He’s the man I walk past every day but never get to see up close. That’s because he’s 140 feet up in St Andrew Square –

The outbreak of war in 1914 prompted a business dispute that ultimately reached the House of Lords and influenced reform to English law. Kate Scarborough explains the details of the case. Cantiere San Rocco SA v Clyde Shipbuilding and Engineering Co Ltd [1923] SC (HL) 105 concerned a

During his lifetime, James Erksine, Lord Grange, Scotland’s Lord Justice Clerk from 1710 to 1714, was best known for his eccentric opposition to the Witchcraft Act of 1735 which aimed to ensure there would be no return to the infamous witch hunts which had claimed the lives of so many women. E

No matter how bitter, few divorces end with the murder of the presiding judge. But in one case from Scotland's bloody legal history, an irate husband, incensed at having to pay aliment to his ex-wife, took the ultimate revenge on the sitting judge: The Lord President Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath.

It's the subject of poems and songs and even has a statue devoted to its memory – Kate Scarborough tells the story of the famous 'Turra Coo'. At the beginning of the 20th century, the government introduced the National Insurance Act 1911, which required employers to make compulsory contributio

Graham Ogilvy reports on new research by US historian Kenyon Zimmer identifying for the first time some of the Scottish trade unionists caught up in America’s first Red Scare. They were the targets of America’s first Red Scare when, following a campaign against immigrants that would make

A routine Friday morning turned “surreal” for members of Faculty and staff when the Dalai Lama paid an unannounced visit. On 22 June, 2012, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism was on a UK tour, and had engagements in the Signet Library and the National Library of Scotland in Edinbur

Graham Ogilvy enjoys a new presentation of the famous denouement of demagogue Joe McCarthy at the hands of Boston lawyer Joseph N Welch. It is an epic moment in American legal history that played out live on US television – and now new light is shed on the withering exchanges between veteran B

May 8th 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. During the six long years of conflict, the WS Society kept a scrapbook of news about Writers to the Signet in service at home and abroad. James Hamilton introduces this poignant resource. One mornin

Robert Pirrie WS, chief executive of the WS Society, tells the story of William Roughead, the Edinburgh lawyer who became the father of the ‘true crime’ genre and the celebrated trial for murder of Miss Madelaine Smith. Amongst the many remarkable collections of the Signet Library,

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the world’s largest unsolved art theft, in which 13 pieces worth around $500 million, including paintings by famous artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

He has attained folk hero status as a sort of Scottish Robin Hood and at Burns Suppers around the country this weekend his execution will be recalled with performances of ‘Macpherson’s Farewell’ also known as Macpherson’s ‘Rant’ or ‘Lament’. But who wa

It might be stretching things a bit to describe this football match in 1980 as part of our legal heritage but it does reflect the days when local faculties ran their own football teams – a practice now in decline – although we were pleased yesterday to report that the Glasgow Bar is mak