Judicial appointments: Lord Stewart
Angus Stewart QC was elevated to the Court of Session and High Court bench on 5 November 2010, and has taken the judicial title Lord Stewart. His career is summarised on the Judiciary of Scotland website (http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/34/685/The-Hon-Lord-Stewart-).
Not mentioned on the Judiciary website, however, is Lord Stewart's contribution to legal history, as editor of two of the four volumes of the Faculty of Advocates Minute Book published by the Stair Society (volumes 46 and 53 in the Society's series). Both volumes, which together cover the momentous period 1751–1798, are distinguished by the editor's well-researched and elegantly written introductions. They appeared in 1999 and 2008 respectively (the latter being co-edited with Dr David Parratt).
Lord Stewart also contributed two articles to the Stair Society's fourth Miscellany volume (volume 49 in the Society's series, published in 2002). The first provides the essential introduction to the Session Papers, a key source in particular for eighteenth-century Scots law, and the second illustrates the use to which the source may be put, under the title “Sir Walter Scott and the tenants of Invernenty”.
Moving away from legal history to the joys of medical negligence, Lord Stewart's article “Damages for the birth of a child” (1995) 40 JLSS 298 was influential in the famous decision of the House of Lords, MacFarlane v Tayside Health Board 2000 SC (HL) 1.
It is clear that in Lord Stewart we have yet another Scottish scholar judge, and Scots Law News looks forward to a distinguished tenure on the bench, while also hoping that there may yet be further contributions on legal history from his able pen (or word processor).
Supreme Court shakes things up for conveyancers
Having shoogled the criminal lawyers in Cadder, the Supreme Court shook up the orderly world of conveyancing and repossession from defaulting debtors with its judgment in Royal Bank of Scotland v Wilson [2010] UKSC 50, 2010 SLT 1227.
Wilson was a case about how the creditor in a standard security might eject the defaulting debtor from the property over which the debt was secured. The relevant legislation stated that the debtor's default had to be preceded by “formal requisition”; the creditor bank argued that a certificate of default lodged in court under section 24(2) of the Conveyancing and Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 1970 met this requirement. This was practice established over the last forty years, even although section 19(1) of the 1970 Act said that the creditor intending to exercise the power to eject “shall serve a notice calling-up the security in...
