The first Edinburgh chair in law : Grotius and the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract

Extracted from text ... _______________________________________________________________ THE FIRST EDINBURGH CHAIR IN LAW: GROTIUS AND THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT John W. Cairns (University of Edinburgh)* 1 Introduction The influence of natural law in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Scotland is well known.1 At a broad political level, the achievements of the modern school of natural law helped the Scots reach varied readings and understandings of contemporary political events such as the Glorious Revolution and the Union of 1707.2 The work of these secular natural lawyers also provided a new way of approaching moral philosophy that came to dominate the curriculum in the eighteenth-century Scottish universities. A crucial figure ..