Andy Wightman, THE POOR HAD NO LAWYERS: WHO OWNS SCOTLAND AND HOW THEY GOT IT Edinburgh: Birlinn (www.birlinn.co.uk ), 2010. xii + 339 pp. ISBN 9781841589077. £20.
| Date | 01 May 2011 |
| Published date | 01 May 2011 |
| Pages | 329-331 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0047 |
This is not a law book. Nor is it precisely a book about law. It is a book about land, viewed through the periscopes of economics, history, geography sociology and law. Mr Wightman, though not a lawyer, knows much about land law, and his concerns about land usually involve questions of law. He is no novice. His best-known work,
The new book has 32 chapters, largely self-contained. It could thus be described as a set of essays. The themes are too varied to be summarised. But the author has a tale to tell about grasping landowners, incompetent (or worse) burgh councillors, and flawed politics, leading to the concentration of landownership in too few hands, and the loss of community land rights. The word “reform” is ever-present, and the last chapter is a wish-list of future legal reforms. They include the scrapping of the law of positive prescription, the banning of
Over the past quarter of a century or so Scots property law has been transformed, partly by legislation, but partly by an academic revolution. But some specialist areas remain insufficiently developed. When a ship is sold, just how and when does ownership pass? Do we really know? There are comparable problems for at least some types of intellectual property. Reading the present book reminded me that, even for land law, there are dark hollows...
To continue reading
Request your trial