Definition
A Scots law remedy providing security for peaceable behavior. Law burrows is a legal process by which a person who fears violence, harassment, or molestation from another may obtain a court-ordered bond compelling the threatening party to keep the peace. The process requires the threatening party to find caution (surety) — that is, to provide financial security backed by a cautioner — guaranteeing future peaceful conduct. Breach of the obligation exposes the bound party and their cautioner to forfeiture of the sum pledged.
The term refers both to the security itself and to the process for obtaining it, though historically commentators treated the process as the more precise referent.
Common Confusion
Law burrows is sometimes loosely equated with the English surety of the peace, and the functional overlap is real: both compel a party to provide security against future breach of the peace on pain of financial forfeiture. However, they are distinct remedies rooted in separate legal systems. Surety of the peace developed through English common law and the jurisdiction of justices of the peace; law burrows is a native Scots remedy with its own procedural history, terminology, and institutional basis. Researchers working in cross-border or Union-era sources should not treat the two as interchangeable, as the procedures and the courts administering them differ.
Why It Matters in Research
Law burrows appears almost exclusively in Scots law sources and is largely obsolete as an active remedy, but it surfaces regularly in historical Scottish legal records, institutional writings, and comparative law discussions. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the term is often abbreviated or rendered inconsistently in manuscript sources. Variant spellings and corruptions appear in older records, so keyword searches should be broad.
Second, Burrill's entry trails off mid-sentence — the visible text references Bell's Dictionary and an article in the North American Review for October 1840. This truncation signals that Burrill was drawing on secondary commentary about Scots law terminology, not direct institutional authority. Researchers relying on Burrill alone will miss the fuller institutional treatment available in Forbes' Institutes and Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, which are the natural primary shelf sources for this term.
Third, because law burrows sits at the intersection of Scots private law and criminal/public order law, it may be indexed differently across different parts of a corpus — sometimes under civil remedies, sometimes under criminal procedure, sometimes under cautionary obligations. Cross-checking under caution and surety is advisable.
Fourth, the remedy has historical significance beyond its narrow procedural function: it reflects the broader Scots law structure of cautionary obligations and the role of the Court of Session and sheriff courts in maintaining civil order, making it relevant to researchers studying the development of Scots private law, not merely criminal law history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries are substantively aligned and trace to the same two sources: Forbes' Institutes (part 2, p. 198) and, in Burrill's case, Robertson's Charles V (Appendix, No. xvi). Both dictionaries define law burrows identically as security for peaceable behavior and acknowledge the distinction between the security and the process for obtaining it.
The shared reliance on Forbes' Institutes is significant. Sir William Forbes's Institutes of the Law of Scotland is an early eighteenth-century institutional text, placing both dictionary entries firmly in the pre-modern Scots law tradition. Neither Black's nor Burrill's attempts to update the definition to reflect the remedy's status in later Scots practice or its relationship to subsequent Scottish court reforms.
Burrill's entry is more detailed but is damaged by truncation, cutting off mid-reference to Bell's Dictionary. Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland (various editions, nineteenth century) would have provided a more contemporaneous Scots law treatment and likely addressed the procedural mechanics more fully than Forbes. Researchers should consult Bell directly rather than relying on Burrill's partial citation.
Neither dictionary engages with the cautionary obligation structure underlying law burrows — the requirement to find a cautioner — which is essential to understanding how the remedy operated in practice. That gap is best filled by the Scots institutional writers, particularly Erskine's Institute of the Law of Scotland and Bell's Commentaries on the Law of Scotland.
Jurisdictional Note
Law burrows is a Scots law remedy with no direct English common law equivalent and no application in other common law jurisdictions. Following the Acts of Union, Scots private law was preserved, and law burrows remained part of Scots procedure, though its practical use declined significantly through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Researchers working in English, American, or other common law sources will not encounter this remedy except in comparative or historical surveys.