Scots Law

Scots law is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing both civil law and common law elements, one of the three distinct legal systems within the United Kingdom alongside English law and Northern Irish law. Its roots run through the varied legal traditions of medieval Scotland, Gaelic, British, Anglo-Saxon and Norse, given a common shape by the feudal reforms spreading from the twelfth century onward; Roman law influence entered later, from around the fifteenth century, where native Scots rules gave no clear answer. The Acts of Union of 1707 merged the Scottish and English Parliaments into one legislature at Westminster, but Article 19 of the Treaty of Union expressly preserved the authority of the Scottish courts, including the Court of Session and the College of Justice, so Scots law itself was never absorbed into English common law. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth century a set of institutional writers, Craig, Stair, Bankton, Erskine and Bell, gradually gained formal authority as sources of law in their own right, a status common law jurisdictions do not generally grant to academic writing.