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The article discusses the 38th annual conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Scottish Legal History Group which was held on October 6, 2018 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and it mentions the next conference on October 5, 2019. Abstracts are provided for papers such as "Supplications to the Papacy in Late Medieval Scotland" by Dr. Alan MacQuarrie and "Continuity and Change: the Highland Estate and the Regality Court of Grant" by Charles Fletcher which were presented at the 2018 event.

This paper takes as its focus the relationship between power and impoliteness in the arraignment section of seventeenth-century trials. Two sources are examined in this regard: The State Trials and The Old Bailey's Proceedings Online. Drawing on Archer's distinction between impoliteness and verbal aggression (2008) and on Culpeper's classification of behavioural norms (2008), this study analyzes facework dynamics in cases where defendants refused to plead unless the court first proved the legitimacy of its procedure. This generated an escalation of face-threats which turned the courtroom into an arena of conflictual discourse. In order to establish whether and to what extent the power confrontation between professionals and defendants was related to the status of the prisoner and/or the seriousness of the crime committed, three types of court cases are taken into consideration: treason trials involving defendants of high status, cases of religious subversion where defendants are upper and middle class Quakers and trials for ordinary crimes (robbery and housebreaking) involving lower class prisoners. The analysis reveals that both upper and lower status defendants attempted to resist the reified power of the authorities, albeit for different reasons. It is also argued that the way in which judges and Attorney Generals construed the prisoners' requests to be heard as impolite/improper testifies to: (i) the high deference expectation of the court and (ii) the professionals' design to frame the prisoner as a subversive individual capable of committing the crime for which he was indicted. By and large, the dataset shows that seventeenth-century defendants were required to conform to a pleading script which -- being necessarily detrimental to their cause -- cast them in a no-win situation from the very beginning of the trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Criminal Court formalizes a legal system which transcends national boundaries. This paper provides instructors desiring to incorporate discussions of the court into their classes with a summary of key topics. Among the topics covered are a brief history of the establishment of the court, its structure, operation, and jurisdiction, U.S. opposition to the court, and the limited role the court can play in combating terrorism. Appendices provide a timeline of the development of international criminal law, information on other sources of law regarding terrorism, and a list of selected sources for further information on the court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]