Boozing judicial quotation of the day...

Whiggish Scots lawyer Henry Cockburn (1779 - 1854) is in many respects a neglected figure, as are the sorts of characters he represents. To my mind, the semoitics of Scotland are rather distorted by the assumption, after Edwin Muir that "although Edinburgh is Scottish in itself, one cannot feel that the people who live there are Scottish in any radical sense" (from his Scottish Journey of 1934).

Of all of Scotland's domestic elites, this anglicising assumption marks the Scottish Bar and the nation's Supreme Courts most of all. This seems to me unfortunate, not least because I don't see the attribution of all oppression to English overlords as terribly productive, concealing as it tends to, the effective operation and implications of Scotland's own "domestic" class stratifications and institutional preserves. That's a matter for another day. For now, I wanted to mention one of Cockburn's curious observations about the judicial conduct of his day and those immediately preceding, which includes the infamous Braxfield and his drinking cronies. Further to this morning's post on the Scottish judiciary's new website, today Lord President Hamilton gave a speech to assembled legal worthies marking the onset of a new Legal Year. Today will also have seen the "Kirking of the Court" in the grey fastness of St Giles High Kirk on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, just around the corner from Parliament House and across the largely unmarked grave of John Knox. Bizarrely, this year has apparently seen a small stooshie about sheriffs' precedence in this clownishly coloured legal parade. In a rare moment of restrained levity, Lord Hamilton wryly laments the disappearance of old Scots legal traditions. These included getting blotto on the bench. He quoted Cockburn's posthumously published Memorials of His Time (1856) thus:

“At Edinburgh, the old judges had a practice at which even their barbaric age used to shake its head. They had always wine and biscuits on the bench, when the business was clearly to be protracted beyond the usual dinner hour… Black bottles of strong port were set down beside them on the bench, with glasses, carafes of water, tumblers and biscuits; and this without the slightest attempt at concealment. The refreshment was generally allowed to stand untouched, and as if despised, for a short time, during which their Lordships seemed to be intent only on their notes. But in a little, some water was poured into the tumbler, and sipped quietly as if merely to sustain nature. Then a few drops of wine were ventured upon, but only with the water; till at last patience could endure no longer, and a full bumper of the black element was tossed over; after which the thing went on regularly, and there was comfortable munching and quaffing to the great envy of parched throats in the gallery. The strong headed stood it tolerably well but it told plainly enough on the feeble. Not that the ermine was absolutely intoxicated, but it was sometimes affected. This was so ordinary with these sages, that it really made little apparent change upon them. It was not very perceptible at a distance and they all acquired the habit of sitting and looking judicial enough, even when their bottles had reached the lowest ebb”