Principles of Equity. Henry Home, Lord Kames
work for earlier cases for Scottish lawyers.
Most of the cases cited by Kames were included in Morison’s Dictionary of Decisions: and I have therefore given the reference to Morison in the footnotes. Morison’s Dictionary is continuously paginated, and so a reference such as M 9505 indicates that the case cited is in Morison’s collection, p. 9505.
Where Kames himself reported a case referred to (either digesting an earlier report or reporting it for the first time himself), a reference is given to Kames’s report. Cases discussed by Kames without any citation (beyond a date) are unpublished cases.
Kames’s own footnotes frequently name the reporters whose work he is referring to: for example, Fountainhall, July 29, 1708, Rag contra Brown. The following is a list of the published collections which are cited by Kames; many are now available in electronic form on databases of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature.
| Bruce | Alexander Bruce, The Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session, in most cases of importance, for the months of November and December 1714, and January, February, June and July 1715 (Edinburgh: James McEuen, 1720). |
| Dalrymple | Decisions of the Court of Session from 1698 to 1718, collected by the Right Honourable Sir Hew Dalrymple (Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1758). |
| Dirleton | Some Doubts and Questions in the Law, especially of Scotland. As also, some decisions of the Lords of Council and Session: collected and observ’d by Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton (Edinburgh: G. Mosman, 1698). |
| Durie | Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie, The Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session . . . from July 1621 to July 1642 (Edinburgh: George Mosman, 1690). |
[print edition page xxx]
| Falconer | David Falconer, The Decisions of the Court of Session. From the Month of November 1744, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: W. & T. Ruddimans). |
| Forbes | William Forbes, A Journal of the Session. Containing the Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session . . . from February 1705 till November 1713 (Edinburgh: for the author, 1713). |
| Fountainhall | The Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session from June 6th 1678 to July 12th 1712. Collected by Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1759–61). |
| Gilmour | A Collection of Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session in two parts. The first contains decisions from July 1661 to July 1666. Observ’d by Sir John Gilmour of Craigmiller (Edinburgh: John Vallange, 1701). |
| Harcase | Decisions of the Court of Session, collected by Sir Roger Hog of Harcase . . . from 1681 to 1691 (Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Gilmour, 1757). |
| Home | Henry Home, Lord Kames, Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session from 1716 to 1728 (Edinburgh: T. Ruddiman, 1728). |
| Kilkerran | Decisions of the Court of Session, from the year 1738 to the year 1752. Collected and digested into the form of a dictionary. By Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran (Edinburgh: J. Bell and W. Creech, 1775). |
| Stair | Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, The Decisions of the Lords of Council & Session in the most Important Cases debate before them, with the Acts of Sederunt . . . from June 1661 to July 1681 (Edinburgh: Andrew Anderson, 1683). |
England
Kames also refers to cases reported in manuscript by the following authors, whose works were digested by both Morison and Kames in their printed collections:
| Haddington | Thomas Hamilton, Earl of Haddington |
| Hope | Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse |
[print edition page xxxi]
| Gosford | Sir Peter Wedderburn of Gosford |
| Nicolson | Sir Thomas Nicolson of Carnock |
| Spottiswoode | Sir Robert Spottiswoode of Pentland |
Statutes passed by the English Parliament, and by the British Parliament after 1707, are generally cited by Kames according to the regnal year, chapter, and section number (for example, 29 Car. II, c. 3, s. 1); I have added the date and title (for example, An Act for Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries, 1677).
At the time Kames was writing, reports of English cases were published under the name of the reporter who compiled them, and Kames refers to these “nominate” law reports (for example, “Salkeld,” “Vernon”). Full references for these reports are given in the list of abbreviations (p. xxxiii). The reports he cites were subsequently reprinted in The English Reports, 176 vols. (London: Stevens & Sons, 1900–1930). Where Kames refers to an English case, I have given both the original reference and the reference to where it can be found in The English Reports reprint.
Roman Law
In Principles of Equity, Kames makes frequent reference to the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) compiled on the orders of Emperor Justinian between the years 530 and 534. Three principal works made up this body of law: the Institutes, the Code, and the Digest. Where Kames quotes or cites from these sources, I have given the modern form of citation, which is as follows:
| Inst | Institutes. References are given to the book, title (that is, chapter) and lex (that is, section). Thus, Inst. 2.23.1 refers to Justinian’s Institutes, book 2, title 23, lex 1. |
| C | Code. References are given to the book, title, and lex. Thus, C 8.34.3 refers to Justinian’s Code, book 8, title 34, lex 3. |
| D | Digest. References are given to the book, title, lex, and subsection of the lex. Thus D 9.2.29.3 refers to Justinian’s Digest, book 9, title 2, lex 29, and section 3. |
[print edition page xxxii]
| pr. | prooemium (preface). Many of the titles and leges have an introductory preface. Thus, D 9.2.2.pr. refers to the introductory preface to book 9, title 2, lex 2 of the Digest of Justinian. |
For quotations from the Digest of Justinian, I have relied on the translation in The Digest of Justinian, ed. Theodor Mommsen and Paul Krueger, ed. and trans. Alan Watson, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), and referred the reader to volume and page numbers in that edition, as well as giving the standard citation for the source. For translations of quotations from the Institutes, I have relied on the edition of Peter Birks and Grant McLeod: Justinian’s Institutes (London: Duckworth, 1987), and similarly given page references and standard citations. Other translations are my own.
[print edition page xxxiii]
| APS | The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 12 vols., ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes (Edinburgh, 1814–75). |
| AS |
The Acts of Sederunt |