Viewpoints: August 2022

It was with great sadness that I read the July Journal, noting the huge contrast between the “People on the move” (pp 10 and 11) and the “Dreams to dust” on pp 12 and 13.

The former contained happy smiling faces of those servicing an entirely different set of interests (at many times the rate of wage) to the young lady who struggled long and hard to provide a “public” service interest that few others are interested in doing, even though it often provides far greater personal rewards than the financial rewards, and exotic sounding appointments, of those on the previous pages.

We don’t just live in a two tier society but we work in a two tier legal system where the gap grows and despair increases.

Rory Bannerman, Bannerman Burke Law, Hawick

David Pedley (Journal, July 2022, 6) raises the interesting point that some solicitors in England & Wales have begun to account for the possibility of more than two genders.

That there are persons who do not fit the simplistic “female or male” categorisation, but that our law nonetheless insists on recognising only these two categories, was clearly stated more than 300 years ago by none other than James, Viscount Stair (Institutions (1681), 1.4.6). Stair’s term was ”hermaphrodite” rather than “intersex”.

The either/or approach was based on medieval canon law, the same law that allowed for girls to be married at the age of 12.

Brian Dempsey, lecturer in law, University of Dundee

Correspondence from readers regarding the seemingly ever-growing arrear of applications to the Land Register has resulted in the Q&A between the Law Society of Scotland and Registers of Scotland, featured on p 34 of this issue. – Editor