FACULTY OF

See also:

• FACULTY OF ADVOCATES

ADVOCATES  , the collective term by which what in England are called barristers are known in Scotland .. They professionally attend the supreme courts in Edinburgh; but they are privileged to plead in any cause before the inferior courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute . They may act in cases of appeal before the House of Lords; and in some of the British colonies, where the civil law is in force, it is customary for those who practise as barristers to pass as advocates in Scotland . This body has existed by immemorial custom . Its privileges are constitutional, and are founded on no statute or charter of incorporation . The body formed itself gradually, from time to time, on the model of the French corporations of avocats, appointing like them by a general vote, a dean or doyen, who is their principal officer . It also differs from the English and Irish societies in that there is no governing body similar to the benchers, nor is there any resemblance to the quasi-collegiate discipline and the usages and customs prevailing in an inn of court . No curriculum of study, residence or professional training was, until 1856, required on entering this profession; but the faculty have always had the power, believed to, be liable to control by the Court of Session, of rejecting any candidate for admission . The candidate undergoes two private examinations —the one in general scholarship, in lieu of which, however, he may produce evidence of his having graduated as master of arts in a Scottish university, or obtained an equivalent degree in an English or foreign university; and the other, at the interval of a year, in Roman, private international and Scots law . He must, before the latter examination, produce evidence of attendance at classes of Scots law and conveyancing in a Scottish university,and at classes of civil; law, public or international law, constitutional law and medical jurisprudence in a Scottish or other approved university . He has then to undergo the old academic form of the public impugnment of a thesis on some title of the pandects; but this ceremony, called the public examination, has degenerated into a mere form . A large proportion of the candidate's entrance fees (amounting to £339) is devoted to the magnificent library belonging to the faculty, which literary investigators in Edinburgh find so eminently useful .