Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, THE COURTS, THE CHURCH AND THE CONSTITUTION: ASPECTS OF THE DISRUPTION OF 1843 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (www.eup.ed.ac.uk), 2008. xvi and 142 pp. ISBN 9780748637546. £30.
| DOI | 10.3366/E1364980908001248 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Published date | 01 January 2009 |
| Pages | 173-175 |
In the 1830s and 1840s a ten-year-long conflict played out in the Church of Scotland, leading to the Disruption of 1843 and the many complex consequences which have affected the Scottish churches ever since. At the time, there was fascination with the events throughout Scottish society, and recognition that the questions at issue were profound ones for the life of the Church but also for the authority of civil courts. Even today, the implications of that dispute still affect the legal life of the Church of Scotland, but it is an easy mistake to assume that this is an issue only in ecclesiastical history and polity. The story of the pre-Disruption cases describes an immensely serious challenge to the jurisdiction of the civil courts of Scotland, and so it is a story which should never be neglected by legal historians and constitutional specialists.
The vast secondary literature in this area stretches back to the 1840s, but a great deal of it is written from the point of view of the implications of the Disruption for the life of the churches in Scotland. Contemporary scholars rightly depend on two reliable modern treatments. The late Alex Cheyne's
Lord Rodger now provides his own account of the Disruption era with a different kind of intention, emphasising the cases’ significance for the civil courts and not just for the Church of Scotland. The first lecture is his chief account of the cases and surrounding history; the second presents the personalities and concerns of the chief protagonists in the General Assembly and the civil courts; and the final lecture examines the implications of the cases, focusing especially on the
Apart from the sheer importance of treating this material from the point of view of the civil law and courts, and not just as a curious episode in Church history, this text has two obvious strengths...
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