Postgraduate Course: Books, Law and Lawyers in Scotland: From Humanism through Enlightenment (LAWS11547)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will explore the development of Scots law through the seventeenth to the nineteenth century by examining the linked topics of legal literature, book collecting, legal education and the development of the legal profession. It will explore how from the late Renaissance through the Enlightenment there developed a Scottish legal literature, the links between that legal literature and the wider literature (primarily on the ius civile, but also on the ius naturale and ius gentium), and its impact on the practice of law and thinking about law in Scotland. These intellectual developments will be linked to the thinking of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the development of legal education and the legal profession. It will finish with consideration of a nineteenth-century aftermath. |
| Course description |
Students will gain familiarity with the development of legal education and training, as well as with the literature of the period and the literature on the period. They will acquire an understanding of the legal profession and its cultural location within Scottish society, while able to reflect on it critically in a comparative context.
Please note that classes for this course will be jointly taught with Honours level students. Although students at both levels will study the same course materials, assessments will be graded according to the relevant benchmark appropriate to the level of study.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 5 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by two essays, one due in the middle of the course (30%), the other at the end of the course (70%). The first essay will be formative as well as summative. |
| Feedback |
The first essay will be formative as well as summative. Feedback will be provided to the students after the first essay, which has a much lighter weighting in the overall assessment, but also with an element of feed-forward to assist in preparation of the second essay. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Show acquisition of knowledge of the development of legal literature, legal culture, legal education in the period covered, and be able to demonstrate and utilize that knowledge in writing and class discussion.
- Demonstrate the ability to exercise choice over reading in the sources and secondary literature of historical material relating to law.
- Exercise critical intelligence in context to analyse specific problems dealing with varied material.
- Consolidate and develop writing skills, and those of study, understanding and expression.
- Exercise autonomy in study, taking ownership of their own learning, while appreciating the significance of the different perspectives of others all in an ethical fashion, while developing an awareness of relativity of certain values
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Reading List
John W. Cairns, Enlightenment, Legal Education and Critique: Selected Essays on the History of Scots Law, vol. 2, EUP 2015
John W. Cairns, Law, Lawyers and Humanism: Selected Essays on the History of Scots Law, vol. 2, EUP, 2015-
John Finlay, The Community of the College of Justice: Edinburgh and Court of Session, EUP, 2012
Karen Baston, The Library of Charles Areskine (1680-1763): Scottish lawyers and book collecting, 1700-1760 available electronically PhD
John Ford, Law and Opinion in Seventeenth-Century Scotland Hart, 2007.
Various specialist essays in periodicals and books |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The course will encourage the students to engage with primary sources and to develop their critical skills. It will help them to better appreciate the limits of the law and its underlying moral values, and their change over time. It will encourage them to appreciate the ways in which literature articulates both the capacities and incapacities of the law as it is practiced and as it might be practiced. |
| Keywords | Books,Law,Lawyers,Humanism,Enlightenment,Legal History |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof John Cairns
Tel: (0131 6)50 2065
Email: John.Cairns@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hannah Ackroyd
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: hackroyd@ed.ac.uk |
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