'Kayshun' and it's a personal security guarantee (I will pay your debt if you are unable to) Makes more sense than it seems at first sight - the term is received from the Latin cautio (kau-tio), which likewise means personal security.
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Whereas the "farm" in fee farm grant (a uniquely Irish estate which is a perpetual freehold lease but the grantee must pay an annual rent) refers to the rent, apparently descending from Medieval Latin. Very clear for teaching purposes.
aug 26, 2025, 1:21 pm • 3 0 • view
This kind of thing was part of the reason I loved studying law.
aug 26, 2025, 1:24 pm • 6 0 • view
Sure, not everyone studying law is a massive nerd. But at the same time, not everyone isn't.
aug 26, 2025, 1:26 pm • 4 0 • view
'Mon the nerds, I say.
aug 26, 2025, 1:27 pm • 2 0 • view
I love learning about legal history. Went down an especially interesting (to me at least) rabbit hole semi-recently about judicial review procedural reform in NI in the 1980s. Though came to a dead end when certain minutes seem to have disappeared ☹️
aug 26, 2025, 1:31 pm • 2 0 • view
Bonkers as it is, I don't think it beats our Kindly Tenants of Lochmaben. Unfortunately abolished by s.64 of the Abolition of Feudal Tenure (Scotland) Act 2000.
aug 26, 2025, 1:26 pm • 5 0 • view
What was the derivation of "kindly" in that context?
aug 26, 2025, 1:28 pm • 2 0 • view
A very good question: Jamieson's dictionary of the Scots language links it to the Anglo-Saxon word for 'kin' denoting close relatives; the rights of the 'King's Kindly Tenants of Lochmaben... derive from their presumed descent from supporters of King Robert Bruce and are perpetual and alienable'
aug 26, 2025, 1:37 pm • 3 0 • view
Thank you!
aug 26, 2025, 1:40 pm • 2 0 • view
See also “irrationality” in English administrative law (a decision can be all too rational - but still “irrational”).
aug 26, 2025, 1:48 pm • 1 0 • view
Or actually irrational, but not actually so bonkers as to be illegal.
aug 26, 2025, 1:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Quite!
aug 26, 2025, 2:01 pm • 0 0 • view
In the case of the Kindly Tenants, the consanguinity is more remote than the English term 'kin' today denotes; it is postulated that 'the kindlie tenants would be the far-off or the poorer relations of King Robert the Bruce'. As the Rev. Thomson put it in 1897 though, 'we have no positive evidence'
aug 26, 2025, 1:40 pm • 3 0 • view
Absolutely amazing stuff.
aug 26, 2025, 1:55 pm • 1 0 • view
On the topic of legal history, I've often wondered why the Exchequer of Pleas had Barons. In the sense of why "Baron"?
aug 26, 2025, 2:03 pm • 1 0 • view
That’s an interesting question. Sir John Baker’s Introduction to English Legal History suggests they were styled as such from the first development of the court in 1190 but doesn’t explain why they had that title.
aug 26, 2025, 2:13 pm • 1 0 • view
We also had Barons of the Exchequer but the titles were simply copied over from England. So no luck (so far) tracing the origin of the title among Irish records either.
aug 26, 2025, 2:17 pm • 2 0 • view
Since we’ve got knowledgeable Scots in this thread, and why we’re on titles, how did the “cunning and wise men” appointed under the College of Justice Act 1532 come to be styled as “Senators”?
aug 26, 2025, 2:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Senators are old (wise) men. So why not? (In 1532.) en.wiktionary.org/wiki/senex#L...
aug 26, 2025, 2:49 pm • 2 0 • view
I don't know. A nod to the role of the pope in financing the court?
aug 26, 2025, 2:43 pm • 0 0 • view
I must caveat this answer considerably as I do not know for sure (Andrew Simpson of Aberdeen would, I think, know - his book on the College of Justice is out next month: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-col...) I would imagine, though, that the terminology just comes from the Latin senex
aug 26, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
A fair amount of Scots legal terminology is just wholesale reception/direct Latin-Scots translation of Roman and ius commune words, so it wouldn't surprise me if the designation of 'senator' was given in recognition of the Court of Session's composition as a College of Justice. I don't know, though.
aug 26, 2025, 2:46 pm • 1 0 • view
This is absolutely one of those examples where you might look down the page and spot the footnote "It came to me in a dream".
aug 26, 2025, 1:43 pm • 3 0 • view