Professorial opinions and Scottish-Dutch legal relations at the turn of the eighteenth century.

This article considers two Scottish cases, in 1693 and 1711, in which legal opinions were obtained from professors in law faculties in the Netherlands. These are the only known examples of this phenomenon. As well as considering the contemporary citation of Dutch sources in Scottish pleadings, and the relevance of legal education particularly in Utrecht, the article considers why, in the context of the cases concerned, such appeals might have been made to the Dutch universities. These Dutch opinions are contrasted with the later tendency of Scottish lawyers to obtain opinions from English counsel in certain circumstances. The article ends with the text and translation of the 1711 opinion from Utrecht. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]