Well here's the OFFICIAL response from our prof of land law (who seems to agree with me that the real issue here is devolution/nationalism not law..)..
"The irony is that (a) udal law is confined to land law: it is not general law private law let alone public law; (b) since feudalism is
virtually dead general Scots land law is already virtually udal (ie nonfeudal) anyway and the (c) come Martinmas this year the last remains of feudalism will vanish so that all land law will be udal/nonfeudal.
Orkney and Shetland may or may not want home rule but udal law is a
red herring."
Well, I have passed the URL to our specialists in Scottish land law at Edinburgh. As one of them is in fact the man who is currently halfway through single-handedly dismantling the feudal system of land tenure I imagine he'll be very pleased :-) It's worth remembering that the Shetland population still thinks of itself as more Norse than British - I suspect this is something of a nationalist issue rather than a Luddite one - plus Udal law may indeed be better for the traditional crofters of the area(subsistence level smallhold farmers) than more conventional land law oriented towards the more urban owner. (Though to be honest, I just don't know.)
It is all change here in the Frozen North, you know. Not only did we have the first case on Web hyperlinking & copyright back in ye olde 1996 (Shetland News vs Shetland Times) , but any day now we are abolishing the post of Lord Lyon King of Arms whose job is solely to deal with heraldic emblems!! Whatever next, you ask with reason.
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| 2004 | 3 |
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