Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History

Select Essays of David Sellar

Hector L MacQueen editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Edinburgh University Press

Published:17th Jul '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History cover

David Sellar was a pioneering historian of Scots law who rejected previous interpretations of the subject as a series of false starts and rejected experiments. He emphasised instead the continuity of legal development, with change a process of integration of external influences from very early times on.  Sellar’s approach, articulated mainly through essays published in diverse places over four decades, significantly influenced our general understanding of legal history in Scotland as well as leading to appreciation elsewhere of its comparative significance. By gathering Sellar's major essays in a single collection, this book demonstrates the scope and reach of Sellar’s overall contribution. It provides an opportunity to view Sellar’s work as a whole and to access his distinctive perspective on the overall trajectory of Scottish law.

There are sixteen essays (let us call them chapters)in the book, of which three are directly concerned with Gaelic and the Highlands, and four contain passages of interest to Highland historians. Another nine are simply well worth reading by anyone, for David had an engagingly fluid, anecdotal style, and topics like cohabitation (Ch. 9), divorce (Ch. 10), murder (Ch. 11) and deathbed wishes (Ch. 12) come alive before our eyes. -- Ronald Black * West Highland Notes and Queries *

ISBN: 9781474488778

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

408 pages