Stephanie Dropuljic presents prize-winning paper at the British Legal History Conference

In July 2002 Stephanie Dropuljic presented a paper at the 25th British Legal History Conference on ‘Early modern law reform? Parliament and Criminal Liability in Scotland’. The conference was hosted by Queen’s University Belfast and the Irish Legal History Society from 6 to 9 July 2022. Stephanie’s paper explored homicide actions prosecuted before the justiciary court for art and part liability (a term used to denote aiding in the perpetration of a crime). This examination yielded established trends in the prosecution of homicide, which challenged our current understanding of this doctrine and revelled a misconception in how it is currently understood. The paper situated the practice before the court within the wider context of the Parliamentary Act of 1592 and the significance this had prosecutions. The paper concluded on the consequences of these finding with reference to older sources of Scots Law. Ultimately, querying if this was law reform driven by legislative initiative.

Stephanie received second place in the Sir Anthony Hart Doctoral Paper Prize at the British Legal History Conference. The prize was announced at the Conference dinner, presented by Dr Niamh Howlin, Dean and Head of School at the Sutherland School of Law university College Dublin. In announcing this, Dr Howlin noted the judging committee’s comments which remarked that the paper was ‘very engaged and thoughtful presentation, demonstrating familiarity with the parliamentary sources, as well as reflecting the real-life experience of defendants.’ The committee noted that it was ‘an important contribution to Scottish Legal History’.