Definition
A term from Scots law with two related but distinct meanings. First, a fixed monetary penalty — specifically the standard fine imposed for absence from court or minor delinquencies, set at £10 Scots. This sum defined the threshold below which a person was considered too poor, and therefore inadmissible as a witness. Second, as a verb (now obsolete in both common and legal usage): to deprive something of legal force, to place a person outside the protection of the law (i.e., to outlaw), or to impose a fine upon someone.
The term is essentially extinct in modern legal usage. Its significance for researchers is almost entirely historical and jurisdictional, confined to early Scots law sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To deprive of the authority or character of law; to put beyond the protection of the law; to outlaw; to fine.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To deprive of the authority or character of law (obs.); to put beyond protection of law; to outlaw (obs.); to impose a fine upon; to fine.
The common usage — both modern and historical — tracks the verbal sense of the term. The legal usage in the historical dictionaries, by contrast, centers on the nominal sense: unlaw as a specific, fixed sum of money serving as a benchmark fine and a witness-competency threshold. A researcher encountering "the king's unlaw" in a Scots legal document is looking at a monetary standard, not an act of outlawing.
Common Confusion
Unlaw (the fine) should not be confused with outlawry, which carried far more severe consequences — complete forfeiture of legal protection and civil death. Nor should the verbal form "to unlaw" (to outlaw or to fine) be read interchangeably with the nominal form. Context in the source document will almost always indicate which sense is operative.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early Scots legal records will encounter "the king's unlaw" as a term of art, not a descriptive phrase. It is a fixed quantity — £10 Scots — and its function was dual: it served both as the standard penalty for minor court-related offenses and as a property threshold governing witness competency. A witness who was not worth the king's unlaw was excluded from testifying, not on grounds of character but of economic standing. This property-based competency rule is significant for researchers studying historical evidence law or the evolution of witness qualification standards.
The verbal form ("to unlaw") appears in older English and Scots texts as well, but is marked obsolete in every modern source. Researchers who encounter it in a historical document should be alert to which of its three senses is intended: (1) stripping legal authority from a rule or act, (2) outlawing a person, or (3) fining someone. The surrounding context — particularly whether the object is a rule, a person, or a transaction — will usually resolve the ambiguity.
There is no modern equivalent concept in American, English, or contemporary Scots law. The term does not appear in current statutory codes or case law. Its research utility is confined entirely to historical Scots legal texts, institutional writers, and early legal dictionaries.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core nominal meaning: unlaw is a Scots law term referring to a standard fine, with £10 Scots as the fixed amount. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's cite Bell's Dictionary as authority for the witness-competency dimension. Burrill's takes a narrower path, defining unlaw strictly as an amercement for non-appearance in court, and cites Skene's De Verborum Significatione and Forbes' Institutes — earlier and more technical Scots institutional sources — without mentioning the witness-competency threshold.
The divergence between Burrill and the Bell-citing dictionaries is instructive: Burrill captures the penalty function, while the others capture the property-qualification function. Neither is wrong; the two functions were related aspects of the same fixed sum. Bell's synthesis appears to be the more complete account.
None of the historical dictionaries address the verbal form of the term, which is treated exclusively as a common-language matter in Webster's and Wiktionary. The legal dictionaries focus entirely on the noun. This is consistent with the term's legal life: the verb was never a term of art in the same sense.
Jurisdictional Note
Unlaw is specific to Scots law and has no counterpart in English common law or American law. Researchers working in English or American legal sources will not encounter this term as a legal concept. Its presence in American legal dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier's, Burrill's) reflects those works' encyclopedic ambition to cover the full Anglo-American and comparative legal tradition, not any reception of the term into American practice.