THE LEGAL PROVISIONS IN THE ACTS OF UNION

• Published in: Cambridge law journal 2007-03, Vol.66 (1), p.106-141
• Main Author: Ford, J. D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attorneys; Civil law; Common law; Constitutional law; Courts; Courts of law; Criminal law; Great Britain. Privy Council; History; Law; Lawyer client communication; Legal aspects; Legislation; Local government; Nation state; Parliament; Parliaments; Political systems; Privacy rights; State formation; Statutory law; Treaties; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 0008-1973; 1469-2139
• DOI: 10.1017/S0008197307000050

ON 1 May 2007 it will be three hundred years since the United Kingdom of Great Britain was created by statutes passed in the separate parliaments of Scotland and England. Commissioners appointed ''to treat for an union'' in 1702 had failed to make much progress. New commissioners appointed four years later succeeded in reaching agreement on twenty-five detailed ''Articles of Union'' on 22 July 1706. The Scottish parliament was assembled to ratify the ''Treaty of Union'' consisting of these Articles on 3 October 1706. It gave approval to the Articles, subject to certain amendments, in the Act of Union it passed on 16 January 1707. The English parliament was presented with both the Treaty and the Scottish Act on 28 January 1707 and it passed its Act of Union, approving the terms set out in the Scottish Act without further amendment, on 6 March 1707. The Treaty that came into effect two months later contained a series of four Articles, originally drafted as a unit, which provided for the preservation of some of the laws and courts of Scotland. An attempt is made here to discover what these four Articles were intended to signify at the time they were drafted, amended and enacted. The Articles are examined in the light of three sources of information: first, such records and reminiscences as have survived of the negotiations behind the agreement of the Treaty and of the debates behind the passing of the Acts of Union; secondly, the more extensive pamphlet literature generated by discussion of the union, mostly in Scotland and to a lesser extent in England; and thirdly, some records of the attempts made during the seventeenth century to achieve a closer union between the kingdoms of Scotland and England, the recollection of which evidently influenced thinking in the early eighteenth century. After the Articles providing for the preservation of some of the laws and courts of Scotland have been examined in turn, attention is briefly given to the more general question of how far the Articles of Union were themselves intended to be preserved as fundamental conditions of any continuing union.