The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi has awarded Dr. Valerie Wallace a three-year Standard Marsden grant (2020-2023) for her project ‘Scots Law and British Colonialism’.
This project unearths the hidden influence of Scots law on the settler societies of nineteenth-century Australia and New Zealand. It will result in the first monograph ever written on Scots law and British settler colonialism.
Dr Wallace’s project examines in particular the Scottish contributions to constitutional law, family law and criminal procedure in the colonies. It investigates the contributions of Scots law to colonial governance and explores the complexities of legal pluralism in the British Empire.
The Act of Union between Scotland and England in 1707 preserved Scotland’s distinctive legal system. Scholars have traditionally regarded Scots law as a source of Scottish nationalism. Dr Wallace is instead interested in exploring how Scotland’s institutions contributed to British colonisation and inspired imperial patriotism.
Dr Wallace describes the project as an ‘interdisciplinary one that will shed light on contemporary problems within New Zealand's legal system’. These problems include the disproportionate rates of Māori incarceration in New Zealand’s prisons. Through this project, she seeks to understand the roots of colonial liberalism that gave birth to a punitive justice system.
The project will provide two MA students with a scholarship to assist the project.
