Definition
A letter of advocation is a writ or warrant issued by the Scottish Court of Session — Scotland's supreme civil court — by which that court assumes jurisdiction over a cause pending in a lower court and removes the action to itself for final determination. Upon issuance, the inferior tribunal is discharged from all further proceedings in the matter. The mechanism is appellate and jurisdictional: it does not merely transfer a record but actively terminates the lower court's authority over the case.
The term belongs exclusively to Scottish civil procedure and has no direct analogue in English common law or American federal practice, though its functional operation closely resembles that of a writ of certiorari as understood in Anglo-American systems.
Common Confusion
A letter of advocation is frequently described in early sources alongside — and sometimes confused with — advocation as a general concept. The distinction matters: advocation is the broader doctrine or right of removal; the letter of advocation is the specific instrument by which that right is exercised. One is the legal principle; the other is the procedural vehicle.
Researchers should also be careful not to conflate this term with advocacy (the act of pleading or arguing a cause), which appears constantly in adjacent sources. The spelling similarity is a persistent trap in older manuscripts and indexes.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is an artifact of Scottish private law and belongs primarily to historical legal research. Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, jurisdictional scope is absolute. Letters of advocation appear only in Scottish legal sources. Searching for this term in English Year Books, American case reporters, or Westminster-derived materials will return nothing useful. When it surfaces in British imperial sources, it is almost always in the context of Scottish appeals or comparative procedure.
Second, the term effectively became obsolete with Scottish procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. Researchers working in post-reform Scottish sources may find the term preserved in historical treatises but not in active procedural use. The Court of Session Act 1830 and subsequent reforms restructured Scottish appellate procedure substantially. Material from Erskine's Institutes — the treatise cited by Black's — reflects the pre-reform system.
Third, the certiorari parallel flagged by Bouvier is instructive for American researchers trying to understand the functional role of the device. If you encounter this term in a comparative law discussion, a colonial-era document, or a treatise on appeals, the closest working analogy is removal by certiorari — but the analogy is functional, not doctrinal. Treat them as cousins, not equivalents.
Fourth, corpus researchers should note that the term may appear in abbreviated or variant forms in older sources: advocation alone, letters of advocation (plural), or simply the advocation. Index searches limited to the full phrase may miss relevant entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's agree on the core definition and attribute the device to Scots law without disagreement. Both correctly identify the Court of Session as the issuing authority and describe the discharge of the inferior court as a central feature.
The key divergence is analytical depth. Bouvier's offers the more useful comparative note, explicitly drawing the parallel to certiorari — a connection that gives common-law researchers something to hold onto. Black's cites Erskine's Institutes (Book IV) as authority, which is the appropriate primary treatise source for pre-reform Scottish civil procedure; Bouvier's omits the citation. Neither dictionary discusses the procedural reforms that diminished the letter's practical role, which is the most significant gap in both entries for a researcher working chronologically.
Neither source addresses whether letters of advocation could issue on interlocutory matters or only on final determinations, a question that may arise when the device appears in a contested historical record.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusive to Scots law and the historical jurisdiction of the Court of Session in Edinburgh. It has no reception in English common law or in any American jurisdiction. Researchers encountering it in an American legal document should treat the context as either explicitly comparative or as evidence of Scots-law influence in the specific transaction or proceeding under review.