<p>Sandy Anton passed away in June 2011 and therefore, sadly, did not live to see in print this much awaited third edition of the great Scottish treatise on private international law, forty-five years after he penned the first edition (in 1966), and over twenty years following the publication of the second (1990, with Paul Beaumont). The challenge, as the authors recognise in their preface, has clearly been to “remain true to its Scottish origins” in an environment which has become increasingly unpropitious to the survival of local legal culture. However, convinced that “national traditions are never too far from the surface”, they have given careful attention and coverage not only to Scottish sources, but also to what they describe as the “ethos” of Anton's original work. This seems to encapsulate a rare combination of interest for continental European and international theory and practice, including in the field of human rights (at a time when, in England, only Ronald Graveson's private international law work showed a similar comparativist disposition), and an acute awareness of the specific Scottish contribution to the field.</p>
<p>Thus, the third edition maintains the highly interesting introductory paragraphs on the “Scottish origins” of private international law (1.26 et seq), which recalls the massive flow of Scottish students to the University of Leiden in the sixteenth and seventeenth century where they came into contact with the teachings of Rodenburg and Huber, and the subsequent influence of continental writings on private international law, including the French and Italian glossators and post-glossators. Joseph Story is quoted as remarking in his own great <italic>Commentaries</italic> on the Conflict of Laws (2<sup>nd</sup> edition, 1841) upon the contrasting situation in England, where such sources long remained largely unknown. This specifically Scottish flavor of early private international law may have gone a long way, centuries later, to ensure the harmonious transition of Scottish conflict of laws to the uniform rules which are currently sweeping through Europe on the wings of the various instruments of secondary European Union law and, more recently, the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. It is this new context that the third edition has had to address.</p>
<p>The task was colossal. Within what a continental legal treatise would name the “special part” of the work, namely, the areas of specific subject-matter in which the general theory of the conflict of laws...</p>
