Definition
Books of Adjournal are the official registers of criminal proceedings maintained by the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland. They constitute the primary original records of criminal trials conducted before that court, documenting the proceedings, judgments, and sentences handed down in Scottish criminal matters. The term derives from "adjournal," itself a Scots legal term referring to the sittings or diets of the High Court of Justiciary.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of Scots law, and researchers encountering it in historical legal texts should understand it as a distinctly Scottish institution with no precise English or American counterpart. The Books of Adjournal function analogously to court minute books or criminal docket records in other jurisdictions, but they carry particular evidentiary and archival weight in the Scottish legal tradition as the authoritative record of the High Court's criminal proceedings.
Several research traps are worth noting. First, the term appears almost exclusively in Scottish legal sources and in texts addressing Scots law specifically. Encountering it in an English or American legal dictionary entry typically signals that the source was drawing on Scottish practice to illustrate a comparative point, or that the author had Scots law training. Second, the records themselves — the actual Books of Adjournal — are held by the National Records of Scotland and span from the sixteenth century forward, making them significant primary sources for historians of Scottish criminal law, punishment, and procedure. Researchers working in historical Scottish criminal matters should be aware that these books may provide trial details unavailable elsewhere. Third, cross-referencing within the Law Mind corpus: any research touching on Scottish criminal procedure, the High Court of Justiciary, or comparative common law traditions may encounter this term. It is not a term that migrated into American or English legal usage in any meaningful way.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers the entry in compressed form: "In Scotch practice. The original records of criminal trials." This is accurate and sufficient for identification purposes, though it tells the researcher little about the institutional significance of these records or how they were used as evidence of prior proceedings. Burrill cross-references "Adjournal" as the parent term, which is the correct navigational move — researchers encountering either term should trace both. The accompanying citation to 1 Brown's Reports at page 4 references Robert Bell Brown's Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Courts of Scotland, an early nineteenth-century Scottish law reporter, consistent with the Scots law context.
Historical legal dictionaries generally treat this term briefly and instrumentally, reflecting that it was a term of art for a specific foreign (from an English or American perspective) jurisdiction's recordkeeping practice. No significant divergence among sources is expected; the term is sufficiently narrow that variation in its definition would signal error rather than legitimate interpretive difference.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to Scots law and the High Court of Justiciary. It has no operative meaning in English, Welsh, or American jurisdictions. Researchers outside the Scottish legal tradition will encounter it only in comparative or historical contexts.