Contract Before the Enlightenment: The Ideas of James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair, 1619-1695

by Stephen Bogle

Overview

Contract Before the Enlightenment represents a fresh investigation of what was then a ground-breaking approach to the law of contract written by James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair (1619-1695), lauded by some as the founding father of Scots law.

As a judge and public figure, Stair was at the forefront of both political and legal developments in Scotland from the 1640s until he died in 1695. This study explores the development and reception of his ideas relating to the law of contract on the eve of the Scottish Enlightenment. It is here that Stair's legal legacy is most evident, and where the imprint of Calvinism, Aristotelianism, and Protestant natural law can be found within Scottish legal thought.

In his legal treatise, the Institutions of Law of Scotland you find a sophisticated, innovative, and novel synthesis of Roman law with Stair's own Calvinist variant of a Protestant natural law theory. Yet it is also possible to find, once the theistic premises of Stair's natural law theory are dropped, the beginnings of a form of Scottish moral philosophy that rose to prominence in the eighteenth century.

Undoubtedly, Stair is not only a key figure within Scottish legal history but also significant to how we understand the transition of Scottish intellectual life from the execution of Charles I to the emergence of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192884961
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/23/2023
Series:	Oxford Legal History
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 6.60(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Stephen Bogle, Senior Lecturer in Private Law, University of Glasgow

Stephen Bogle is a Senior Lecturer in Private Law at the University of Glasgow. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2005 with an MA (Mental Philosophy) before commencing his LLB at the University of Strathclyde (2007). After qualifying as a solicitor in Scotland (2010), he returned to the University of Edinburgh to do both his LLM by Research (2012) and PhD (2016).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Transforming the Law of Contract1. Contractual Thought Before Stair2. Roman Law as a Source of Contract Law3. A New Basis for the Law of Contract4. Standing by the Faith of Pactions and Promises5. Stair's 'Plain Method' and Structure6. Human Action, the Will, and Freedom7. Freedom, Liberty, and Conscience8. Freedom to Contract in the Seventeenth Century9. The Reception of Stair's Contractual Thought

Editorial Reviews

"It provides a fascinating account of the ideas that created Scotland's contract law. No doubt it will be a key text in that study for years to come." — Max D Winthrop, The Gazette

"The great strength of this book is Bogle's attention to the complex philosophical and theological motivations underlying Stair's approach to contract law." — Karie Schultz, Scottish Historical Review

From the Publisher