Definition
An action in Scots law by which a grantee compels a grantor to complete or perfect the title to property that the grantor has already agreed or is legally obligated to convey. Where a transaction has occurred but the grantor has failed to execute the necessary documentation to vest full title in the grantee, the grantee may bring this action to force performance of that obligation. The remedy is specific and compulsory: the court orders the grantor to do what the underlying agreement requires, rather than substituting damages for the failure.
The action arises most commonly where a disposition (the Scots law equivalent of a deed of conveyance) has been granted or agreed to, but some step necessary to complete the title — recording, execution of ancillary documents, or formal delivery — has not been taken. It is, in substance, the Scots law analog to an action for specific performance of a conveyancing obligation in common law systems.
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Common Confusion
Despite sharing the word "adjudication," this term has no meaningful connection to modern uses of adjudication in criminal, juvenile, or administrative law. Researchers encountering this phrase in a Scots law or historical common law context should not import the procedural meaning of adjudication from those modern frameworks. The term is a term of art in Scots conveyancing, not a general judicial determination. See also the distinct Scots law action of adjudication for debt, by which a creditor attaches a debtor's heritable (real) property — a structurally different remedy that shares only the prefix.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a Scots law artifact. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century Scottish property law, or in comparative law materials that draw on Scots conveyancing doctrine, will encounter it in that specific technical context. It does not appear in English, American, or most Commonwealth sources as a term of art, and researchers expecting it to mean something broader based on the word "adjudication" alone will be misled.
Historical sources covering Scots property law — particularly institutional writers such as Stair, Erskine, and Bell — provide the primary doctrinal background for this action. Black's Law Dictionary carries only a bare single-sentence entry, which reflects the term's limited penetration into American legal usage. The entry exists primarily as a reference point for lawyers and researchers encountering the term in Scottish deeds, conveyancing records, or comparative property law treatises, not as evidence of live American doctrine.
Researchers should be alert to two traps in historical sources. First, "adjudication" in Scots law encompasses a family of distinct actions (implement, debt, extinction, etc.), and historical texts do not always specify which form is meant. Second, the procedural mechanics of completing title in Scots law — the Sasine system and, after 1979, the Land Register of Scotland — differ structurally from common law recording systems, so functional analogies to American or English conveyancing must be drawn carefully.
For researchers working in Law Mind's primary corpus, which is predominantly American and English common law, this term is unlikely to appear outside historical comparative materials or Scots law primary sources. If the term surfaces in an unexpected context, verify whether the source is drawing on Scots doctrine directly or using the phrase loosely.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among standard American legal dictionaries: "In Scotch law. An action by a grantee against his grantor to compel him to complete the title." This is accurate as far as it goes but offers no procedural detail, no discussion of the remedy's scope, and no indication of how the action fits within the broader Scots law of adjudication. It functions as a signpost rather than a working definition.
No entry appears in Bouvier's Law Dictionary or other major American historical dictionaries, which reflects the term's narrow jurisdictional relevance. The absence from those sources is itself informative: this was never a naturalized American legal concept, and its appearance in Black's is cataloguing rather than adoption. Researchers needing substantive doctrine must go beyond American legal dictionaries to Scots institutional sources.
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Jurisdictional Note
This action is specific to Scots law and has no direct equivalent as a named action in English, American, Irish, or general Commonwealth jurisdictions. The functional analog in common law systems is an action for specific performance of a contract to convey land, but the procedural and theoretical frameworks differ. Do not treat this term as interchangeable with specific performance without careful attention to those differences.
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