The seeming temerity of an English lawyer in reviewing a book dealing wholly or mainly with Scots law is not quite what it seems. This volume, according to the Foreword contributed by Lord Hope, “has been designed primarily to assist those in the other jurisdictions within the United Kingdom to understand our system and to advise them how to make best use of it”. Be it said at the outset that this reviewer cannot reliably tell whether his understanding has been assisted, but his familiarity with this legal system, so near but yet so far away, certainly feels as if it has been increased. Though he is not yet confident enough to venture into print using Scots legal terminology, this should not be taken as a sign that the book has failed in its task.

Now many of those who have had to deal on an occasional basis with Scottish practitioners will have been on the receiving end of that rather headmasterly prickliness with which Scots lawyers use their legal terminology to correct the usage of the English. The most immediately valuable part of this book—which is wholly and refreshingly free of this hostile cast of mind—is the glossary, which interprets the terminology in which a book on Scots law must inevitably be written. But it is a source of amazement that the English language (if this is the right name for it) can be deployed to such striking effect: if ever there was division by a common language, this is a brilliant example of it. And though one may regret to say it, there is little doubt but that this is deeply off-putting to an English lawyer. One is happily accustomed to dealing with Continental European lawyers, with whom one can describe and speak in one’s own language, and suffer no embarrassment when these terms are translated. But where Scots law is concerned, the translation goes from evidently-wrong English into correct-but-alien English: a process which is almost designed to make one feel considerably more uncomfortable. This book may be a first (and it does appear to be a first) step towards allowing British lawyers to communicate more happily with each other; but changing the cast of minds will be a longer process.

Linguistics and terminology aside, the book gives a description of the Scottish legal system, the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts, a description of the progress of an action through the Scottish courts, a section on attachment, enforcement and the obtaining of evidence; and a selection of precedents (“styles”). Now, as the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts is, in large part, governed by the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 (as amended), the reader might hope to be illuminated by an examination of the Brussels and Lugano Conventions through the eyes of a semi-civilian legal tradition. But he would be unexcited by what he found. The account of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice is not inaccurate, but it is brief and wholly uncritical: it gives no new insights, but instead purges the account of the law of most or all of its uncertainty. This impression that all is clear may not benefit litigants. (In passing, it would have been interesting to learn why the procedure for making a reference to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of the Brussels Convention has, so far as one can tell, been utilized by the Scottish courts only once in 20 years—one has just been received at the Registry!) Nor, even,