Legal Practice in Eighteenth-century Scotland

这项研究将集中在18世纪苏格兰法律实践的性质和发展。这是苏格兰法律发展的关键时期。当时，苏格兰律师自己在很大程度上发展了法律，而且在后联盟的背景下，是在源自英格兰普通法的法律文献以及苏格兰人本身所属的大陆罗马法传统的影响下这样做的。这项研究旨在探索律师和客户之间的关系，并看看律师的角色如何造福于苏格兰更广泛的社会。这项研究的一个主题是苏格兰法律中心、爱丁堡法院和全国各地当地律师的角色之间的关系。爱丁堡律师、印章和法律代理人的撰稿人了解中央民事法院的程序，最适合为客户及其当地代理人提供建议，就他们打算提起或抗辩的诉讼类型采用哪些辩护律师。另一方面，当地代理人将主要负责房地产管理，也可能以检察官的身份出现在当地治安官或郊区法院。然而，有证据表明，地方法院的检察官往往组成社团，他们试图保护自己的垄断地位，往往只在其中一个职位空缺时才接纳新成员。这通常是在法官的纵容下进行的，尽管这与关于工作场所非法合并的想法的发展以及任何有适当资格的职业男子遵循其职业的自由是不一致的。关于律师之间为客户代理所涉及的关系的信息，通常可以在尚存的法律辩论中找到，也可以在律师的私人通信和法庭记录中找到。地方法院有一名检察官财长，其作用是起诉犯罪并确保维持秩序。拟议的研究将试图通过审查地方和中央记录，更准确地界定地方财政的作用。还将利用爱丁堡的镇议会记录，以揭示该镇检察官财政的作用。倡导者担任镇议会的评审员，部分研究将调查这个办公室的意义，不仅对倡导者(其中许多人后来成为法院法官)，而且对该镇更广泛的民众来说，他们显然对当地法院的决策质量感兴趣，当时爱丁堡新城正在建设中。就更广泛的社会而言，还将调查为穷人免费代理的律师的作用，这一点在法院审判庭已有详细记录。这不仅限于辩护人，还包括盖章的作者和1755年后获准在法院执业的法律代理人。因此，正在进行的研究是多方面的。它将揭示18世纪苏格兰律师和他们的客户之间的大量关系。与此同时，它将揭示当地律师团体是如何运作的，以及他们在多大程度上反映了他们在全国性组织(如果总部位于爱丁堡)上的做法，比如倡导者学院和WS Society，这些组织的成员是司法学院的一部分。由于它不仅基于法庭和法律记录，而且基于当代的私人通信，它应该大大增加我们对诉讼策略如何发展以及律师如何处理自己的专业纠纷的了解。

This research will focus on the nature and development of legal practice in Scotland in the eighteenth century. This was a crucial period in the development of Scots law. It was a time when Scots lawyers themselves largely developed the law and, in the post-Union context, did so under the influence of legal literature deriving from the common law in England as well as the continental Roman law tradition to which the Scots themselves belonged. This research aims to explore the relationship between lawyers and clients and to look at how the role of lawyers benefited the wider society in Scotland. One theme of the research is the relationship between the centre of Scots law, the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and the role of local law agents across the country. Edinburgh practitioners, writers to the signet and law agents, understood the procedures of the central civil court and were best placed to advise a client, and his local agent, on which advocates to employ for which type of action they intended to bring or defend. The local agent, on the other hand, would deal largely with estate management and might also appear as a procurator in the local sheriff or burgh court. However, there is evidence that the procurators in local courts, who often formed themselves into societies, sought to protect their monopoly and tended only to admit a new member when a place amongst them fell vacant. This was often done with the connivance of the judge, although it was at odds with the development of ideas about unlawful combinations in the workplace and the freedom of any suitably-qualified profession man to follow his profession. Information about the relationships involved between lawyers in acting for a client is generally to be found in surviving legal arguments but also in the private correspondence of lawyers and in the court records themselves. Local courts had a procurator fiscal whose role was to prosecute crime and ensure the maintenance of order. The proposed research will attempt to define more closely the role of the local fiscal through examining local and central records. Use will also be made of the town council records in Edinburgh in order to bring to light the role of the town's procurator fiscal. Advocates acted as assessors to the town council and part of the research will investigate the significance of this office not only for the advocates (many of whom went on to become Court of Session judges) but for the wider populace of the town who clearly had an interest in the quality of decision-making in their local courts at a time when the New Town of Edinburgh was being built. In terms of wider society, the role of lawyers acting for free on behalf of poor persons, which is well-documented for the Court of Session, will also be investigated. This was not restricted to advocates, but included both writers to the signet and, after 1755, law agents who had been admitted to practise in the court. The research being undertaken is therefore multi-faceted. It will uncover a great deal about the relationship between lawyers and their clients in eighteenth-century Scotland. At the same time, it will reveal much about how local groups of lawyers operated and the extent to which they mirrored their practices on national, if Edinburgh-based, organisations such as the Faculty of Advocates and the WS Society whose members formed part of the College of Justice. Since it will be based not simply on court and legal records, but on contemporary private correspondence, it should add significantly to our knowledge of how litigation strategies developed and how lawyers managed their own professional disputes.