Definition
In Scots law, the Book of Responses is an administrative record maintained by the Director of the Chancery. It documents seizures of property at the point when the Director issues an order to the sheriff directing that seized property be returned to an heir whose service (formal legal recognition of heirship) has been returned to him. The book functions as an official register tracking the link between a chancery order, the corresponding sheriff's action, and the heir entitled to receive the property.
The term is historical and jurisdiction-specific, belonging to the procedural and administrative machinery of Scottish feudal property and succession law. It has no functional equivalent in English common law practice and is not operative in modern legal systems.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in historical Scots law materials — particularly sources dealing with feudal land tenure, heirship, and chancery procedure — should understand that it refers to a narrow administrative record-keeping function, not a pleading document, court register, or correspondence file in the modern sense.
The term surfaces most often in contexts involving the Scottish law of service of heirs (the process by which an heir formally established title to heritable property through a retour or "return" to chancery). The Book of Responses documented the administrative step that followed a completed service: the order to the sheriff and the notation of any seizure affecting the property before it passed to the heir.
Because "response" in modern legal usage carries connotations of pleading, reply, or answer to a legal action, researchers risk misreading this term when encountered without context. The word here carries its older sense of an accounting or record of a transaction — closer to "accounting rendered" than to "reply filed."
Historical sources are sparse. Neither Black's nor Bouvier's treats this term with any depth, and Black's entry as reproduced appears to conflate this entry with material from a different headword (bonus), suggesting a typographical or editorial error in some editions. Researchers should treat truncated or confused historical dictionary entries for this term with appropriate caution and rely primarily on Bouvier and Wharton's Lexicon for the authoritative short description.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionaries converge on the same core description: the Book of Responses is an account kept by the Director of the Chancery in Scotland to note seizures in connection with orders directing a sheriff to deliver property to an heir following a returned service. Bouvier cites Wharton's Lexicon as the underlying authority, and Rapalje & Lawrence tracks Bouvier closely, adding no new substance.
Black's entry, as available in the Law Mind corpus, appears to be a corrupted or misfiled entry — the text reproduced under this headword describes a "bonus" rather than the Book of Responses. This is a notable editorial anomaly and researchers should not rely on the Black's entry for this term without verifying the edition and page independently.
Rapalje & Lawrence usefully appends the Latin maxim *Bonum defendentis ex integra causa; malum ex quolibet defectu* (The success of a defendant depends on a perfect case; his defeat arises from any defect) immediately following this entry as a separate item, with no substantive connection to the Book of Responses itself. This is an artifact of alphabetical sequencing in the original source, not an indication that the maxim relates to the term.
No historical dictionary addresses the Book of Responses beyond its bare administrative description. The full procedural context — how the Director of Chancery operated, the mechanics of service of heirs, and the role of the retour — must be sourced from specialized works on Scots feudal law rather than from these general legal dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively a term of Scots law and has no application in English, American, or other common law jurisdictions. Researchers working in comparative property law, Scottish legal history, or historical succession law will encounter it; practitioners in modern jurisdictions will not.