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Structure, taxonomy, and categorization are central to the juristic science. It not only affects the ease by which relevant rules of law can be found, but can intimate to the reader priorities and irrelevancies. This chapter examines Stair’s taxonomy. Yet it departs from existing literature by investigating in detail the philosophical and theological inspiration for Stair’s arrangement of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland (Institutions). It explains why Stair was impressed by Grotius’s demonstration of a universal and methodical approach in The Preliminary Discourse of The Rights of War and Peace and will show why Stair was receptive to François Douaren’s criticism of traditional methods otherwise used to arrange Roman law. These authors emboldened Stair to leave behind the known way of Roman law and to innovate. However, they did give him a structure or an arrangement. Rather as this chapter explores, Stair most likely drew upon a loose application of Aristotle’s physics and logic and Calvin’s structuring of the Moral Law. That is, it argues that the structure of the Institutions and his arrangement of his title on the law of contract is informed by a Calvinist epistemology of morality. |
