Definition
The Articles of Union are the foundational constitutional documents by which the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were formally united into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Agreed to by the parliaments of both nations, the Articles comprised twenty-five provisions governing the terms of political merger, including the structure of the unified parliament, the continuation of Scottish law and courts, trade arrangements, and the Protestant succession to the throne. The Articles were given statutory force by the Acts of Union passed separately by each parliament — the Union with Scotland Act 1706 (England) and the Union with England Act 1707 (Scotland) — which together dissolved both parliaments and constituted the new Parliament of Great Britain.
As a legal term, Articles of Union refers specifically to this 1707 instrument. The phrase is occasionally used more generically to mean any articles or terms negotiating the union of political entities, but in legal literature the reference is almost exclusively to the Anglo-Scottish union.
Common Confusion
Articles of Union (1707) should not be confused with the Acts of Union 1800, which united Great Britain and Ireland. The parties, terms, constitutional consequences, and legal histories of the two unions differ substantially. Additionally, "articles of union" (lowercase, generic) occasionally appears in corporate and ecclesiastical contexts to describe merger terms between organizations or congregations; these uses bear no legal relationship to the constitutional instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early eighteenth-century English and British constitutional history will encounter the Articles of Union as the structural baseline for understanding the legal relationship between English and Scottish law after 1707. The Articles did not create a single unified legal system: Scottish private law, including Scots common law and the Court of Session, was expressly preserved. This bifurcation is consequential for historical legal research, because cases, statutes, and treatises from the period immediately before and after 1707 may speak to "English law" or "Scots law" as distinct systems operating within a single constitutional state.
The twenty-five Articles are not reproduced in most legal dictionaries — including the historical sources here — so researchers relying on Black's or Burrill's alone will find only a bare reference. For the text and analysis of individual articles, primary statutory sources and constitutional histories are necessary.
A further research trap: the Acts of Union 1707 are sometimes confused with the Acts of Union 1800, which accomplished the later union of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The two events are distinct, involved different parties and terms, and produced different constitutional instruments. Citations referencing "the Acts of Union" without a date or party designation require verification to determine which union is meant.
The Articles of Union have no direct analog in American law. References to the term in American legal sources are almost always either historical background material in constitutional discussions or quotations from English authorities.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement, with Burrill appearing to reproduce Black's entry nearly verbatim. Both cite 1 Blackstone's Commentaries 96 as their sole authority, identifying the Articles as the product of the 1707 union between England and Scotland and noting the count of twenty-five articles. Neither dictionary goes beyond this bare identification. There is no analytical content in either source regarding the legal effect of individual articles, the preservation of Scots law, or the constitutional significance of the instruments. Researchers should treat these entries as a pointer to Blackstone rather than as independent authorities. Blackstone's own discussion in the Commentaries provides the more useful treatment of what the union accomplished and what it left intact.
Jurisdictional Note
The Articles of Union are instruments of British constitutional law with no operative force in other jurisdictions. In Scottish legal scholarship, the Articles retain significance as a source of argumentation about the protected status of Scots private law and the Court of Session. In English legal scholarship, they are primarily treated as historical constitutional background.