The First Edinburgh Chair in Law: Grotius and the Scottish Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

This chapter examines the development of teaching from the chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on the intellectual content of the classes and the politics of professorial appointments. For the first half-century, law teaching from the chair was intermittent. However, this does not mean that the holder was incapable or unlearned. When the holder of the chair did teach, the class was based on Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis libri tres. The chapter first provides an overview of legal education in Scottish universities before profiling the law professors who were appointed to the new chair between 1707 and 1831, including Charles Areskine, William Kirkpatrick, George Abercromby, Robert Bruce, James Balfour, Allan Maconochie, and Robert Hamilton. Robert Bruce was the last holder of the chair to teach Grotius' natural law.

Blackstone

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John V. Orth
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
First Century ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

This chapter focuses on Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), the author of the most important book in the history of the common law. The four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) and the series of lectures Blackstone delivered at Oxford from 1753, changed the way lawyers thought about the law. Blackstone’s Commentaries were read by more people, non-lawyers as well as lawyers, than any other English law book. Their influence is difficult to overstate, and extends into the twenty-first century. Almost as momentous was Blackstone’s influence on legal education. While gradual, the transfer of legal education from the law office and the courts to the university, which Blackstone pioneered, had an enormous impact on legal development, as law professors contributed to the formation of generations of lawyers and themselves came to play a significant role in legal development.

The Origins of the Glasgow Law School: The Professors of Civil Law, 1714–1761

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Law School ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

This chapter examines the establishment of legal education in the University of Glasgow in 1714 and its development over the next five decades. The University of Glasgow established a chair in Civil Law in 1713, gaining funding through an allocation by the Crown from ‘King William's Gift’. Although the University was allowed to appoint the first professor, the chair was thus a Regius Chair, with appointments thereafter made by the Crown. This was to cause problems for the law professors when they tried to ensure the appointment of candidates whom they favoured. The chapter considers why the University of Glasgow founded a chair in Law; how the first professor, William Forbes, came to be appointed and why he desired the position; his tenure of the chair; and the appointment and tenure of his two immediate successors, William Crosse and Hercules Lindesay.

Rhetoric, Language, and Roman Law: Legal Education and Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

Education in law in the Scottish universities has a continuous history only from the early eighteenth century. In 1707, the regius professorship of public law and the law of nature and nations was founded in Edinburgh, to be followed in 1710 and 1722 by professorships in civil (Roman) and Scots law respectively. In the University of Glasgow, the regius professorship of civil law was established in late 1713 and first filled in 1714. These developments were not entirely novel. Throughout the seventeenth century, there had been regular, if unsuccessful, attempts to create university chairs in law. While the background to the foundation of the university chairs requires further careful study, we may note that, by at least around 1690, it was thought desirable to introduce the teaching of both civil and Scots law, though the notion of teaching both does go back at least as far as the First Book of Discipline of 1561. After the visitation of the University of Edinburgh that resulted from the political and religious settlements of 1688–89, it was proposed to establish a single professorship to teach both civil and Scots law. This proposal in the late seventeenth century is in line with general developments throughout Europe. Nothing, however, was done, probably because no person or body was willing to finance a chair.

The Influence of Smith’s Jurisprudence on Legal Education in Scotland

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

This chapter examines the influence of Adam Smith's jurisprudence on legal education in Scotland. By the middle years of the eighteenth century, natural law thinking had come to dominate the moral philosophy curriculum in the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. Of primary importance in this development was Gershom Carmichael's adoption of Samuel von Pufendorf's treatise De officio hominis et civis in Glasgow in the 1690s. Following Pufendorf, Carmichael redefined moral philosophy as natural law. The chapter argues that Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence showed how law could be taught as a dynamic historical process and that he revitalised the teaching of natural law as a potential discipline for lawyers. It explains how Smith turned natural law from an abstract ahistorical discipline into a concrete, historical explanation and critique of law.

Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

Part I Histories, Ch.3 Transformations of Natural Law: Germany 1648–1815

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koskenniemi Martti
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
External Events ◽  
Legislative Policies ◽  
The Law ◽  
International Power

This chapter examines the transformation of ideas about international power that took place in the idiom of natural law between 1648 and 1815, a key period of early Western modernity. Pressed in part by external events and in part by developments in the relations between the Holy Roman Empire’s constituent units, university jurists switched between abstract justification of the imperial structure and deliberating the technical merits of alternative legislative policies. These debates had an immediate relevance to how German jurists conceived jus gentium (the law of nations) and why they would finally discuss it under the title of ‘public law of Europe’. Thus, the transformations of natural law in the period 1648–1815 constructed and delimited the ways in which what is settled in the international world and what is open for political contestation was to be conceived up to the present.

Adam Ferguson's Pedagogy and his Engagement with Stoicism

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Nicolai
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Lecture Notes ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Pedagogical Function ◽  
The University ◽  
Stoic Philosophy

Adam Ferguson, lecturer of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1764–1785), was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. His published works, however, have sometimes been dismissed as derivative and viewed as less important than some of his contemporaries, because of his reliance on ancient Stoic philosophy. An analysis of Ferguson's lecture notes, conversely, demonstrates Stoicism's pedagogical function. Rather than adopting Stoic principles, Ferguson used their terminology to teach philosophical concepts. Ferguson's nuanced discussion of ancient philosophy in his lectures demonstrated his critiques of the ancient schools and his purpose for employing their language throughout his texts.

scholarly journals Appraisal as an effective means of assessing student performance in Clinical Legal Education at the University of Portsmouth

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 196
Author(s):  
Pat Heather Feast
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Appraisal System ◽  
Team Working ◽  
Constructive Criticism ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Giving Feedback

<p>The aim of this paper is to advance the notion that using the workplace model of appraisal is an effective method of assessing students who undertake clinical legal education (CLE). It is the belief of the team working in the law clinics at the University of Portsmouth that appraisal provides students with both praise and constructive criticism and the necessary information to enable them to improve their performance while working in the University of Portsmouth clinics. Giving feedback on a regular basis via the appraisal system motivates the students to strive for improvement and helps them to meet the challenges of achieving excellence. At the University of Portsmouth, staff, students and, in some cases, the representatives of our partner organisations work together in our appraisal system to tackle any barriers to student success within our CLE progammes.</p>

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