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Tag: Scottish legal system

Title to Sue for Damage to Hired Property: A Scots Law Perspective

by Lisa Cowan, PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh

In Armstead v Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Co.[1] the appellant, Lorna Armstead, was involved in a road collision.  While her own car was out of action, she hired a rental car, a Mini Cooper, from Helphire. By a terrible coincidence, she was then involved in a second accident in the rental car.  A third party, insured by the respondent Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA), was at fault. Under the terms of rental agreement with Helphire, Armstead became liable for an amount equivalent to the daily rental rate of the car.  This represented the value of Helphire’s loss of use of the car while it underwent repairs. (This was referred to in the case as the ‘Clause 16 sum’).

When Armstead’s appeal eventually reached the Supreme Court, the issue turned on the interaction between the law of tort and contract.  In addition to the cost of repairing the rental vehicle, could the value of Armstead’s contractual liability to Helphire be recovered from RSA, the insurer of a third party who was at fault?  At stake was the princely sum of £1,560.

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Leases and the Law of Domestic Service: Delving into Scotland’s Employment Law History

by Dr. Alice Krzanich, Lecturer in Law and Legal History, University of Aberdeen

The history of employment law in Scotland is an under-researched topic. While some aspects of law and labour in Scotland’s past have been examined, others have been barely touched at all. Moreover, while many elements of employment law in modern-day Scotland are similar or identical to those in England and Wales, Scots law has its own distinct history concerning labour and employment. This is due to Scotland’s unique legal institutions and juristic traditions. There is consequently a need to investigate the history of employment law in Scotland more fully and to tease out some of the themes of its development.

This blog entry illustrates some of that distinct legal heritage by examining the employment of domestic servants in early nineteenth-century Scotland. In particular, it shows how Scots contract law regulating domestic service shared certain analytical features with the law of leases in the period c. 1800–1850. This may seem surprising, as the employment of domestic servants may (outwardly at least) seem to have little directly in common with leases of property. Yet this analysis will reveal commonalities between the two, resulting from the influence of Roman law alongside customary practices. Moreover, the law of leases was not the only area of private law that the contract of domestic service shared connections with in the nineteenth century; it was also often conceived as part of the law of familial obligations. This raises further questions about the nature of historical Scottish master-servant law, which this analysis will highlight.

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The case for digital assets legislation in Scotland

by David Fox, Professor of Common Law, University of Edinburgh

The England and Wales Law Commission has recently published its final report on Digital Assets (Digital assets – Law Commission).[1]  The report comes after an exhaustive study of the way that existing principles of private law in England and Wales would apply to this emerging class of assets.  It is of great significance since digital assets are fast becoming mainstream vehicles for carrying out financial transactions as conventional forms of financial securities are adapted to work on blockchain technology.  The report acknowledges that private law is as relevant to digital assets as the specialist regimes of financial services regulation that were the main focus of attention in the early days of their development.

The Law Commission report is relevant to Scotland which has an important fintech industry of its own but where the application of fundamental principles of Scots private law to digital assets remains obscure.  Any new clarification of the legal rules in Scotland would need to allow for the subtle similarities and differences between English and Scots property law and for the divergent patterns of legal development in each jurisdiction.

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Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History: Select Essays of David Sellar, edited by Hector L MacQueen (Edinburgh Studies in Law, Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

By Hector MacQueen, Emeritus Professor of Private Law, University of Edinburgh

David Sellar (1941-2019) was a pioneering historian of Scots law who convincingly and conclusively rejected previous interpretations of the subject as a series of false starts and rejected experiments. He emphasised instead the continuity of legal development in Scotland, with change a process of integration of external influences with indigenous customs from very early times on. Thus down to the present Scots law embraces Celtic and other customary elements reaching far back into its past, while also having been open to innovation from the developing Canon, Civil, Feudal and English Common law since the middle ages. This too has left deep marks upon the law’s character as a “mixed legal system”.

David’s approach, articulated mainly through essays published in diverse places over four decades, has had significant influence upon general understanding of legal history in Scotland as well as leading to appreciation elsewhere of its comparative significance. Gathering his major essays together in this single collection demonstrates the scope and reach of David’s overall contribution; it is perhaps an approximation to the monograph that he was not spared to write. What distinguishes the contribution from others in the field is the perspective that David himself brought to bear, which was one no other writer in the field could achieve, especially in relation to Celtic and Canon law.

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