National Council on Public History

The Scottish Court of Session Digital Archive Project is an initiative to explore everyday life in early America and the British Atlantic world of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through Session Papers. These printed materials were submitted to Scotland's supreme civil court as part of the litigation process. As a court of appeal and of first instance, the Court of Session in this period held jurisdiction over contract and commercial cases, matters of succession and land ownership, divorce proceedings, intellectual property and copyright disputes, and contested political elections. Scottish women, Virginia merchants, aristocratic Highland proprietors, famous authors, enslaved laborers, soldiers, American Loyalists, and many more individuals sought justice before the court.