The Assumption of Jurisdiction: Parliament, the King's Council and the College of Justice in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

This article considers how the Scottish Court of Session developed out of the restricted jurisdiction of the medieval King's Council, and achieved recognition as a supreme civil court during the sixteenth century, thereby assimilating the main judicial role of the medieval Scottish Parliament. It argues that the change resulted not from any particular legislative or judicial decision but from a gradual assumption of jurisdiction concealed within an expansion of the scope of traditional remedies. It is argued that the most decisive step occurred when the pleading of actions on heritable title to land began to be seen as within the ambit of those remedies. It is argued that this assumption of jurisdiction had occurred by the time of the foundation of the College of Justice in 1532, precluding any development along English lines of equitable remedies outside the procedures of the common law in Scotland.