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      LITIGATION, THE ANGLO-SCOTTISH UNION, AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS AS THE HIGH COURT, 1660–1875

      The Historical Journal
      Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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          Abstract

          This article examines the role of the House of Lords as the high court from the Restoration of 1660 to the passage of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act in 1876. Throughout this period, lay peers and bishops judged appeals on civil law from the central courts of England and Wales, Ireland (aside from between 1783 and 1800), and Scotland after the Union of 1707. It has long been known that the revolution of 1688–9 transformed the ability of parliament to pass legislation, but the increased length and predictability of parliamentary sessions was of equal significance to the judicial functions performed by peers. Unlike the English-dominated profile of eighteenth-century legislation, Scots constituted the largest proportion of appellants between 1740 and 1875. The lack of interaction between Westminster and Scotland is often seen as essential to ensuring the longevity of the Union, but through comparing the subject matter of appeals and mapping the distribution of cases within Scotland, this article demonstrates the extent of Scottish engagement. Echoing the tendency of Scottish interests to pursue local, private, and specific legislation in order to insulate Scottish institutions from English intervention, Scottish litigants primarily sought to maintain and challenge local privileges, legal particularisms, and the power of dominant landowners.

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          Most cited references65

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          Lawsuits and litigants in Castile, 1500–1700

          R Kagan, Kagan (1981)
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            Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth : The 'Lower Branch' of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England

            Historians have long recognized that members of the lower branch of the legal profession, the ancestors of the modern solicitors, played an important part in early modern English society, but difficulties in establishing their identities and recovering their career patterns have hitherto left them virtually unstudied. This work charts the massive sixteenth-century increase in central court litigation and offers an explanation of it largely in terms of social change and the decline of local jurisdictions. At the same time, it argues that the period witnessed a major turning point in the relationship between the legal profession and English society. The number of practitioners in the lower branch who were associated with the legal institutions of London grew to such an extent that by 1640 the ratio of lawyers to population was not much different from that in the early twentieth century. Although this tremendous growth in the amount of legal business and the number of legal practitioners created some serious administrative problems, the commonly held view that the lower branch in this period was largely untrained, dishonest, and uncontrolled is no more than a myth.
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              Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1688–1798

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                The Historical Journal
                Hist. J.
                Cambridge University Press (CUP)
                0018-246X
                1469-5103
                December 2018
                December 04 2017
                December 2018
                : 61
                : 4
                : 943-967
                Article
                10.1017/S0018246X17000346
                c044114d-6e52-46b6-ba5c-8240f105247b
                © 2018

                https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

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