Stair and the Inleydinge of Grotius

The tercentenary of the first publication of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland by James Dalrymple, Viscount of Stair, fell in 1981. Since that time there has been renewed interest in the Institutions, both as a continuing source of law and also as representative of its period in Scottish legal history. Central to both approaches is the question of which works Stair relied upon in the formulation and writing of his treatise. Recent scholarship has identified or confirmed a number of ius commune sources. In particular, in an important paper William Gordon has explored Stair's use of, among others, Grotius' De jure belli ac pacis (1625), Vinnius' commentary on the Institutes of Justinian (1642), and Gudelinus' De jure novissimo (1620).1 Subsequently, Thomas Richter has also drawn attention to Vinnius as a possible source.2 Of course, other works of the ius commune may also have been used by Stair. John Ford has dated the writing of the first edition of the Institutions to 1659,3 and, if this is correct, any work circulating in Scotland before that date could reasonably have been consulted by Stair. This includes Grotius' other great legal work, his Inleydinge tot de Hollandsche Rechtsgeleertheyt (1631). Like the Institutions itself, this was a treatise on national law – in this case on the law of the Dutch province of Holland – rather than on natural or civil law; and like Stair's work it was written in the vernacular, in this case Dutch.