by Laura Quinn
The early beginnings of our Law list stem from our journals publishing where we have been proud publishers of the Edinburgh Law Review since 1997.
Building on the success and prestige of the journal, we began to develop our book publishing in Law with the launch of the Edinburgh Studies in Law book series. The series was launched in 2005 in association with the Edinburgh Law Review Trust and under the series editorship of Professor Elspeth Reid. It remains a flagship research series for the EUP law list, now under the series editorship of Professor Alexandra Braun. The series has published a range of volumes on Scots law and other legal cultures and it continues to provide a forum for legal scholarship that is comparative, historical or philosophical, in both private and public law.
In 2005 we published the first book in the series, A Mixed Legal System in Transition: T. B. Smith and the Progress of Scots Law edited by Elspeth Reid and David Carey Miller and we are continuing to publish exciting works in this series, such as: Floating Charges in Scotland: New Perspectives and Current Issues edited by Jonathan Hardman and Alisdair MacPherson, Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History: Select Essays of David Sellar edited by Hector L. MacQueen, Comparative Perspectives in Scottish and Norwegian Legal History, Trade and Seafaring, 1200-1800 edited by Andrew R.C. Simpson and Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde and Authorities in Early Modern Law Courts edited by Guido Rossi. From here, we have continued to build our publishing in Scots Law and in Law more broadly.
Today, Scots Law is a core component of our publishing. Our Scots Law list has grown considerably since the acquisition of Dundee University Press in 2013 and the acquisition of the law list of Avizandum Publishing in 2019. In addition to Edinburgh Studies in Law, we now publish the Edinburgh Law Essentials (formerly Dundee Law Essentials) and the Avizandum Statutes. As the only dedicated Scots Law publisher based in Scotland, our ultimate goal is to become the go-to publisher for anyone working in Scots Law. We are committed to delivering exceptional texts for the Scottish legal market. We publish books for students, academics and legal professionals across the core areas of Scots Law.
We are proud to have published a range of successful core and supplementary textbooks including Scots Criminal Law, 2nd edition by Pamela Ferguson and Claire MacDiarmid (September 2014), Delict: A Comprehensive Guide to the Law in Scotland, by Frank McManus et al (August 2021), Criminal Evidence and Procedure, 4th edition by Alastair N. Brown (February 2022), Scots Commercial Law, 2nd edition edited by Ross G. Anderson, Scottish Evidence Law Essentials, 6th edition by James Chalmers (January 2024) and Scottish Commercial Law Essentials, 3rd edition by Malcolm Combe & Alisdair MacPherson (April 2023).
In addition to textbooks, we publish monographs, reference works and edited collections across all areas of Scots Law, Scottish Legal History and socio-legal studies. We also welcome books that consider Scots law in its comparative context. More recently, we have also published practitioner reference works and guides, a market that has opened up to us since the acquisition of Avizandum publishing.
Our ongoing aim is to grow our publishing across the core areas of Scots Law as we continue to connect students, academics and legal professionals working across Scots law.
In addition to our publishing in Scots Law, we have a general Law publishing program which has been growing in strength and stature. Our general law list is designed to be more interdisciplinary in scope and we publish monographs, edited collections and reference works that examine how law interacts with society, politics, technology, culture and that will reflect on the history of the discipline. Our emphasis here is on issues of law, society and justice and a focus on socio-legal studies. Through our publishing, our goal is to respond to the most challenging and pressing legal questions facing us today: from the role of law in human rights to access to justice; from the environment to technology; and from politics to culture. Our journals publishing includes the African Journal of International and Comparative Law which we have published since 2005 and our newer journals, Legalities: The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Law and Society and Global Energy Law and Sustainability.
Our notable book series’ within this strand of our publishing include Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities edited by William MacNeil – this has included projects from leading names including Peter Goodrich and Jeanne Gaakeer on subjects as diverse as law and science fiction, law and contemporary theatre, law and theories of the environment.
We also publish the Encounters in Law and Philosophy series edited by Thanos Zartaloudis and Anton Schultz and the new Edinburgh Studies in Law, Justice and the Visual series edited by Peter Goodrich and Desmond Manderson. We also have the Future Law series edited by Burkhard Schaefer and Edina Harbinja, an exciting and timely series on law and technology. We continue to develop our general law list by taking a critical, interdisciplinary and socio-legal studies approach and our books hold a critical lens up to the legal systems in place and the role of law in our global society.
A number of our books have made a significant impact within their fields in recent years, notably Daniel Matthews’ Earthbound: The Aesthetics of Sovereignty in the Anthropocene and The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice which won the Penny Pether Prize in 2021 and 2023 respectively.
Over the next year or so, we will develop and launch a number of exciting new research series, including Access to Justice in a Changing World, Comparative Legal Studies, Society and Justice, Global Studies in Commercial and Financial Law, and Comparative and Critical Studies in Tax Law and Fiscal Policy.
Some recent and forthcoming books give a flavour of the fresh and exciting directions of research we hope to connect our readers to:
• Lady Justice: An Anatomy of Allegory by Valérie Hayaert
• Digital Death, Digital Assets and Post-mortem Privacy: Theory, Technology and the Law by Edina Harbinja
•Sex, Consent and Justice: A New Feminist Framework by Tina Sikka
• Legal Temporalities of Sexual Consent by Caroline Derry
• Digitalising Courts in Asia: Exploring the Mechanics of Judicial Transformations edited by Siddharth Peter de Souza and Julia Wellhausen
• The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies: Law, Politics, Culture by James Gilchrist Stewart
• Diversity and Integration in Private International Law edited by Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm and Maria Blanca Noodt Taquela
About Laura Quinn
Laura Quinn is the Commissioning Editor at Edinburgh University Press for Law.
You can contact her at laura.quinn@eup.ed.ac.uk
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