Speaker, Dr Stephanie Dropuljic

The records of the justiciary courts, held at the National Records of Scotland (NRS), offer a unique understanding of the court’s administrative history and its manuscript tradition. This talk will discuss important changes in the institutional history and practice of the court, as discerned from the study of the court records. Previous publications have considered the records of the justiciary court and provided transcriptions of the entries, but these have not considered the nature of the records and what the formation of those sources can tell us about the wider history of Scottish criminal justice.

Dr Stephanie Dropuljic is a lecturer at the University of Exeter, having a completed a PhD in Law at the University of Aberdeen. Her research interests are in criminal law and evidence, particularly legal history. Dr Dropuljic is interested in the development of criminal law doctrines, gender and the law, employing interdisciplinary and comparative work in the study of criminal law and evidence. Her PhD thesis reconstructed the procedural and administrative history of Scotland’s justiciary court from 1580-1650 with special reference to actions for homicide. Dr Dropuljic has published on the role of women in raising criminal actions, elections and governance in early modern Scotland, and on the classificatory rules regarding homicide.