WHERE ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND DIFFER

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 178, 26 April 1938, Page 10

WHERE ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND DIFFER

Separate Legal Codes

VISITOR’S COMMENTS ON A CURIOUS POSITION

Formerly Sheriff-Principal of Lanarkshire, Scotland, Mr. John S. Mercer, K.C., who was a visitor to Wellington on Sunday by the Franconia, drew attention to the extraordinary anomaly whereby entirely different laws govern Scotland and England. "The conservative Scots at the time o£ the Union Stipulated that they should be permitted to keep their own system of law,” he said. “It is a curious position. It is as if your North and South Islands had each a separate code of laws.” The two legal systems, he said, had remained entirely distinct. Although much of the commercial law and the statutory law was the same throughout England and Scotland, three-quarters of the Scots law which was not statutory was directly derived from the old Roman law. It had been imported into Scotland through Holland, long before the Union. In particular, the laws of heritable property and of family relationships were wholly' different from anything in England. In consequence, if one was called to the Scottish Bar one’s practising was restricted to Scotland. and one came in little contact with the English legal profession, except in the highest courts of the land. “At the time of the Union the Scots made it a condition that the law should remain free from interference,” he said. “You see, the two countries had been old enemies for centuries —but happily that strife is ended now.” Mr. Mercer said that his headquarters were at Glasgow, second city of Great Britain. There was at present a steady concentration of Scottish population toward the Clyde, and Glasgow’s trade and commerce were growing apace. Referring to the gang troubles of the poorer districts of Glasgow, he said that they had never been as formidable as was made out. The gang trouble was now a thing of the past. It had never been out of the control of the police, and had been almost, invariably based on religious difficulties—clashes between rival factions of Irish migrants from Northern Ireland and from the Free State respectively. Mr. Mercer retired from his practice a few months ago, and decided that the first use he would make of his unaccustomed leisure would be to see the world fr< ”.i the Franconia.