The Civil Law Centre

In April of 1994 the School of Law at the University of Aberdeen approved the establishment of a Centre for the Study of the Civil Law Tradition. In 2009, after a break of a number of years, the Centre was relaunched with a broader remit. The Centre provides a single institution devoted to the study of the Civil law and the Civil tradition in modern legal systems.

Forthcoming Events

The Centre is currently planning a series of events for the 2011-2012 session. To view the provisional programme, please click here.

Anyone who would like to speak at the Centre, attend any of our events, or request more information is more than welcome to contact Adelyn at adelyn.wilson@abdn.ac.uk. You can also stay aprising of the Centre's activities by following us on twitter: @civillawcentre

Previous Events

“An Eye for an Eye: Vengeance in Norwegian law in the Middle Ages”

Joint with the History Department Seminar Series

Dr. John Ford

University of Cambridge

“Sixteenth Century Scottish Prize Law”

The Centre also hosted a one-day conference on Scottish Legal History. The conference programme is available here

The Centre was officially relaunched with a seminar with Dr Eric Descheemaeker (then University of Bristol) presenting the paper “Dividing Wrongs: The Civilian Experience”.

Research Projects

Teaching at the University of Aberdeen

Various courses promoting the aims of the Centre are currently available to students of the University, including:

Each year a number of the Honours courses have guest speakers. In 2010-2011, we were delighted to have Mr James Merson (advocate) join us for a seminar in Legal History in Recent Courts Practice. In 2011-2012, we will be welcoming Dr Ivan Milotec (Zagreb) to present at a joint meeting of the Centre's seminar series and the Roman law honours course.

In the 2011-2012 all of the above courses will be co-ordinated by Adelyn Wilson. Please direct any inquiries about the courses to her at adelyn.wilson@abdn.ac.uk.

We are delighted to welcome Katherine Anderson as the Centre's first PhD student after the relaunch. Katherine will be studying the law and procedure in the Northern Isles after the transfer into Scottish jurisdiction. She will be co-supervised by Robin Evans-Jones and Adelyn Wilson. She is funded by the Society and Culture in the North Sea World Research Project

Anyone interested in pursuing postgraduate study at Aberdeen are encouraged to contact Adelyn Wilson or any of the members of the Centre.

Members of the Centre

A full list of publications by the various members of the Centre can be found by following the links below:

Adelyn joined the University in September, 2009. She had previously taught at the University of Edinburgh while working on her doctoral thesis. Her research interests include Roman law and Scottish and European legal history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She is a member of the Stair Society, the Scottish Legal History Group, the Legal History Discussion Group, the European Society for Comparative Legal History, the Association of Young Legal Historians, and the Society of Legal Scholars. She currently teaches and coordinates: Foundations of Private Law; Roman Law Honours; Scottish Legal History Honours; European Legal History Honours; and Legal History in Recent Court Practice. She is also the current director of the Civil Law Centre and the convener of the Aberdeen Roman law, Legal History and Civilian Tradition research group.

David L Carey Miller came to Aberdeen as a lecturer in 1971 following a period of practice at the Natal Bar as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. With prior degrees from the Universities of Natal and Edinburgh, his Aberdeen doctoral thesis subject was the role of the advocate. Turning increasingly to property law David Carey Miller published South African and Scottish textbooks in 1986 and 1991; Land Title in South Africa (with Anne Pope, University of Cape Town, 2000), was researched with British Academy and Carnegie Trust funding. Professor Carey Miller's interest in comparative law and legal history is reflected in the joint editorship of two volumes of essays: the first (with David W Meyers, 1992) as a tribute to Professor Sir Thomas Smith QC; the second (with Professor Reinhard Zimmermann, 1997) to mark the quincentenary of the University of Aberdeen. A particular current aspect of his work is the area of property problems in portable antiquities and works of art. David Carey Miller is currently director of the Baltimore/Maryland Summer School in Comparative Law, an annual five week programme which the Aberdeen Law School has hosted since 1987. He was Head of the School of Law for the 2005-2006 academic year and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in early 2006. He has been appointed a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for three years from September 2006. Professor Carey Miller retired from his full-time post in 2006 but continues to be active in teaching and scholarship.

Professor Evans-Jones specialises in Roman law, unjustified enrichment and comparative law. He edited The Civil Law Tradition in Scotland, published by the Stair Society in 1995. The first volume of his work on unjustified enrichment (details below) was published in 2003, and he is currently researching for the second volume. His contributions to scholarly literature have appeared in: Revue Internationale des Droits de L'Antiquité; Bullettino dell'Istituto di Diritto Romano; Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis (Legal History Review); Labeo; Cuadernos Informativos de Derecho Historico; Rechtshistorische Journal; Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte; Juridical Review; Irish Jurist; Journal of the Law Society of Scotland; Scots Law Times; South African Law Journal; Law Quarterly Review; Cambridge Law Journal.

Professor van der Merwe retired from the Chair of Civil Law in 2005 but remains associated with the Law School and is active in teaching and scholarship; under existing arrangements, he works in the first semester of each year at Aberdeen. In January 2007 Professor van der Merwe was appointed Professorial Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Stellenbosch; the Aberdeen Law School has a link with the Stellenbosch Faculty. Before joining Aberdeen, he was formerly a Professor in Private law and Roman law, and Dean of the Law Faculty, at the University of Stellenbosch. He is the co-author of an introductory book on Roman law and author of the standard handbook on the South African law of property. He contributed the chapters on 'Apartment Ownership and Security in Immovables' to the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law. He has published several articles on condominium law in South African, French, Dutch, German, Singaporean, and Scottish periodicals. He acted as consultant on condominium law for the Chief Registrar of Deeds in Singapore, the Scottish Law Commission, and the Dutch Royal Academy of Notaries. He is a participant in the European Common Core project of the Italian University of Trento (property section), the project of Mixed Legal Systems under the auspices of Professor Palmer of Tulane, and the conferences on Recent Developments in Property Law at the Centre for Property Law at Reading. He was president of the South African Society of University Teachers of Law (1976-77) and Chairperson of the South African Committee of the International Academy of Comparative Law (1996-98). He is a former Rhodes Scholar and the holder of the prestigious German stipendium of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1973, 1980, 1991, 1995, and 1998).

Professor Paisley's doctorate was awarded for a thesis on Crown Rights in Relation to Land in Scotland. He joined the School following a period as a solicitor in private practice specialising in land law and conveyancing in Scotland and is conducting research related to land law including servitudes.

Andrew joined the School of Law as a lecturer in September 2010, following three years as a doctoral student at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. His recently completed postgraduate studies concerned perceptions of legal authority in Scotland during the sixteenth century. While in Cambridge, he supervised Civil Law Part 1A for Caius College for the academic year 2009-2010. His research interests include Scottish and European legal history, with a particular focus on the history of legal thought. He is also interested in the law of Obligations and Property law. He is involved in teaching Foundations of Private law, An Introduction to European Legal Systems, Conveyancing, Scottish Legal History (Honours), European Legal History (Honours), and Corporeal Moveable Property (Honours).

Catherine Ng joined the School of Law as a lecturer after a period of private practice in Toronto, and then completing her DPhil in intellectual property law at the University of Oxford and her post-doctorate work at the Graduate Institute (HEI - now "Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement") in Geneva. Her principal teaching and research interests are in the laws relating to intellectual property, the media, the arts, antiquities, history, and in legal history and anthropology as they pertain to these subject areas. She is the Director of the Post-Graduate Research Student Training Programme at the School of Law.

Books from the Centre

Books recently published by current and former members of the Centre include the following:

Carey Miller, D. and Irvine, D., Corporeal Moveables in Scots Law, pp.367 + xli, Scottish Universities Law Institute / W.Green, 2005. 2nd edn.

Carey Miller, D. and Reid, E. (eds), A Mixed Legal System in Transition: TB Smith and the Progress of Scots Law, pp.332 + x, Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Carey Miller, D. and Zimmermann, R. (eds.), The Civilian Tradition and Scots Law. Aberdeen Quincentenary Essays. Schriften zur Europäischen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte, bd. 20. Duncker & Humblot. Berlin, 1997. ISBN 3-428-09011-X. ISSN 0937-3365.

Carey Miller, D. and Pope, A., Land Title in South Africa. Juta. Capetown, 2000. ISBN 0-7021-5120-3.

Evans-Jones, R. (ed.), The Civil Law Tradition in Scotland. The Stair Society, supplementary series, vol. 2. Edinburgh, 1995. ISBN 1-872517-08-0.

Metzger, E. (ed.), A Companion to Justinian's Institutes. Duckworth. London, 1998. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, NY, 1998. ISBN 0-7156-2798-8.

Metzger, E., A New Outline of the Roman Civil Trial. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 1997. ISBN 0-19-826474-7.

Metzger, E., Litigation in Roman Law. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2005. ISBN 0-19-829855-2 [for the OUP USA page for this book, click here]

Papers from the Centre

A small number of papers by present and former members of the Centre can be read directly from here.

Evans-Jones, R.

Roman Law in Britain. Originally published as R. Evans-Jones, 'Roman Law in Britain', in U. Manthe and C. Krampe, edd., Quaestiones Iuris. Festschrift für Joseph Georg Wolf zum 70. Geburtstag [Freiburger Rechtsgeschichtliche Abhandlungen (n.F.), Bd. 36] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000) (ISBN 3-428-09866-8), pp 83-110. Reprinted by Roman Law Resources Electronic Reprints in HTML, or for downloading in Microsoft® Reader or PDF.

MacCormack, G.

Metzger, E.

'Acquisition of Living Things by Specification', Edinburgh Law Review 8 (2004), 112-15. [Download in PDF]

Actions. Originally published as E. Metzger, 'Actions', in E. Metzger, ed., A Companion to Justinian's Institutes (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., Ltd, and New York: Cornell University Press, 1997), ISBN 0715628305 (Duckworth Pbk), 071562798 (Duckworth Hbk), 0801485843 (CUP Pbk), 0801436192 (CUP Hbk), pp 208-228. Reprinted by Roman Law Resources Electronic Reprints in HTML and for downloading in PDF format or Microsoft® Reader.

'Adam Smith and Roman Servitudes', Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 2004. [Download preprint in PDF]

Evidence for Ladungsvadimonium. [Paper]. 52nd Session of the Société 'Fernand De Visscher' pourl'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité, Madrid. 29 September 1998. (17K).

Interrupting Proceedings in iure: uadimonium and intertium . Originally published at 120 Zeitschrift der Papyrologie und Epigraphik 215-225 (1998). Reprinted by Roman Law Resources Electronic Reprints in HTML and by the ZPE for downloading in PDF format.

'Roman Judges, Case Law, and Principles of Procedure', Law and History Review 22/2 (2004). [Download in PDF]

Scholarship in the Sunshine. [Paper]. 50th Session of the Société 'Fernand De Visscher' pour l'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité, Brussels. 17 September 1996. (18K).

Below are materials from former students of the Centre.

Meyer-Spasche, R.

Roman Law [The Recovery of Benefits Conferred under Illegal or Immoral Transactions, Chapter One]. Part of a thesis submitted for the degree of PhD at the University of Aberdeen. 2002. Available for reading in HTML, or for downloading in PDF format or Microsoft® Reader.

du Plessis, J.

Compulsion in Roman Law. Part of a thesis submitted for the degree of PhD at the University of Aberdeen. 1997. Available for reading in HTML, or for downloading in PDF format or Microsoft® Reader.

Roman Law Resources

Dr Ernest Metzger, formerly a member of the Centre and now at the University of Glasgow, manages a comprehensive internet 'portal' for Roman law. Roman Law Resources gives access to a wide range of internet materials, including sources, secondary literature, bibliographies, CD-ROMs, book reviews, discussion lists, discussion forums, newsgroups, journals, events, faculties, libraries, instititutes, chairs, errata, booksellers, and other related websites. The site also contains a directory of historians of ancient law, a collection of corrections to the English translation of Justinian's Digest, two large palingenesiae of late imperial laws, and a moderated discussion forum for Roman and civil law.

Aberdeen Quincentenary

In September of 1995 the Centre hosted A Celebration of the European Legal Tradition, a conference to mark the quincentenary of the University of Aberdeen. Seventy participants from Britain and the continent attended the two days of presentations and discussion of Roman, Civil, and European Law. The papers have been published by Duncker and Humblot.

Library at Aberdeen

In 1995 Professor Gero Dolezalek prepared an enormous catalogue of the older legal literature held at the library at the University of Aberdeen. The catalogue is principally concerned with the literature of ius commune, and comprises all law books (generally) at Aberdeen printed before 1800, all books on Scots law and other non-English law before 1840, and some later law books hidden in unsuspected places. His An Account of Antiquarian Legal Literature at Aberdeen is available for reading.