Mr Ryan McGuire
Senior Undergraduate Administrator
Email: law.ugo@ed.ac.uk
Email: law.ugo@ed.ac.uk
Email: is.helpline@ed.ac.uk
Email: law.online@ed.ac.uk
BSc. (Hons), PgCert, FHEA
Email: is.helpline@ed.ac.uk
Email: law.online@ed.ac.uk
Director of Students
LLB (Hons), Dip LP, Solicitor
Tel: +44 (0)131 651 4307
Email: scott.wortley@ed.ac.uk
View my publicationsScott Wortley was educated at Annan Academy and the University of Edinburgh graduating LLB (Honours) in 1994. He qualified as a solicitor in 1997 completing a traineeship at Messrs Ketchen and Stevens, WS. Thereafter he was employed at the Scottish Law Commission and worked as senior legal assistant on the Scottish Law Commission projects on feudal abolition (culminating in the Report on Abolition of the Feudal System which was implemented by the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc (Scotland) Act 2000) and Real Burdens. He was heavily involved in the research for the Discussion Paper on Real Burdens, and the subsequent Report on Real Burdens - having a consultancy role on the latter project following his departure from Scottish Law Commission staff.
From 2000-2005 he was a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde.
In 2002-2003 he was adviser to the Justice 1 committee of the Scottish parliamenton the Title Conditions (Scotland) Bill assisting in the preparation of the Stage 1 report and amendments submitted by committee members during Stage 2 of the parliamentary process. The bill, based on the Scottish Law Commission work on real burdens, was enacted as the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003.
During 2005 he was a consultant to the Scottish Executive in its work on the reform of diligence (enforcement of decrees) against land. This project culminated in the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Act 2007.
Scott was a member of the Law Society of Scotland Conveyancing Committee and the Joint Consultative Committee between the Registers of Scotland and Law Society of Scotland. He is a former convenver of the board of examiners of the Law Society of Scotland and has been an external examiner in the law school at Glasgow Caledonian University, University of West of Scotland, and the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
Scott is currently a member of the working group assisting the Scottish Law Commission in its work on moveable transactions (including the reform of the law of assignation and the reform of the law of moveable securities in Scotland).
Research Interests
Scott has research interests in the area of rights in security (including floating charges), issues in property law, and legislation, the legislative process, and statutory interpretation.
He is currently working on work on the legislative history of the Prescription and Limitation (scotland) Act 1973, based on a period of research in the archives in the Scottish Law Commission; and is working on articles relating to the enforcement of standard securities.
In the past he has written on the law of real burdens, issues in transfer of ownership, and the law of floating charges and diligence. He is the author of the chapters on co-ownership, capacity, and rights in security (forthcoming in Volume 2) in Scottish Land Law (with the late Professor W M Gordon). He authored the substantial treatment of the law of real burdens in the seventh edition of Professor McDonald's Conveyancing Manual, and articles in a number of journals. He has also delivered continuing professional development seminars on various aspects of the law of real burdens around Scotland. His collaborative work on the topic with Dr Andrew Steven has been relied on in the Lands Tribunal for Scotland (see, eg, At.home Nationwide Ltd v Morris). Scott's work on the interaction between floating charges and diligence was relied on in the recent five judge decision in MacMillan v T Leith Developments Ltd [2017] CSIH 23.
He has a particular interest in comparative aspects of property law especially relating to other mixed legal systems, having published: on co-ownership with Professor Duard Kleyn from the University of Pretoria in R Zimmermann, D Visser and K Reid (eds), Mixed Legal Systems in Comparative Perspective: Property and Obligations in Scotland and South Africa (2004); and on rules regulating double transfers; and was one of the co-authors of the Scottish national report on transfer of movables in Europe.
Scott has supervised PhD students on the law of floating charges, the law of positive prescription, and the law of posession.
He welcomes expressions of interest in postgraduate research in the areas of property and commercial law, particularly on the topics of obligations encumbering land, and the law relating to insolvency processes, rights in security, debt and debt enforcement.
Mooting Coordinator
LLB, LLM, PhD
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 6520
Email: Asanga.Welikala@ed.ac.uk
View my publicationsDr Asanga Welikala is Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh, and the Acting Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law. He is also a Research Associate of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Sri Lanka. Asanga's research interests lie in comparative constitutional law, applied constitutional theory, and Commonwealth constitutional history. He teaches and supervises across the public law field in Edinburgh, at Ordinary, Honours, masters, and doctoral levels. Asanga has been involved on both sides of transnational influence on constitution-making: as a member of the Office of Constitutional Support, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq; in various international advisory capacities in other countries on constitutional and legal reform issues; and as an active civil society voice and an independent expert in the current constitution-making process in Sri Lanka.
Current Research Interests
Stephen Tierney is Professor of Constitutional Theory. He served as Deputy Head of Edinburgh Law School from 2017-2020 and was the founding Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law. He is also Distinguished Global Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School, USA.
Professor Tierney was appointed Honorary King’s Counsel in 2024 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2020. He has served as Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee since 2015 and was a Board Member of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland from 2015-24. He was elected to the Executive Committee of the UK Constitutional Law Association in 2015 and served as an editor of the United Kingdom Constitutional Law blog from 2015-2020. He also acted as Constitutional Adviser to the Scottish Parliament Referendum Bill Committee in 2013-14.
Professor Tierney’s teaching and research interests lie in the constitutional law of the United Kingdom, comparative constitutional law and the constitutional theory of the state, direct democracy and federalism.
He has published three monographs with Oxford University Press: Constitutional Law and National Pluralism (2004) and Constitutional Referendums: The Theory and Practice of Republican Deliberation (2012), and The Federal Contract: A Constitutional Theory of Federalism (2022). He has published nine other books and over 80 refereed journal articles and book contributions, including papers in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Modern Law Review, Public Law, Current Legal Problems, European Constitutional Law Review, Global Constitutionalism and the Supreme Court Law Review.
Professor Tierney has been awarded Senior Research Fellowships by both the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In 2018 he won an ESRC Brexit Priority grant with two colleagues to study ‘The repatriation of competences after Brexit: implications for devolution’. In 2022, with two Australian colleagues he won an Australian Research Council grant worth c.$400,000 to study Federalism and Constituent Power. Since 2012 he has been a senior fellow of the Centre on Constitutional Change which attracted approximately £5,000,000 in grant funding between 2012 and 2020.
Professor Tierney regularly provides legal advice to governments and other public and private bodies. He is frequently asked to give evidence to parliamentary committees and does a wide range of media work in the areas of United Kingdom and comparative constitutional law and British politics.
BA, MSc, PhD
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2024
Email: anna.souhami@ed.ac.uk
View my publicationsDr Anna Souhami is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Law. Anna is an ethnographer, and her current research is an ethnography of policing in the remote Northern islands of Scotland. Through extended fieldwork in two remote archipelagos, her research explores how order is maintained in remote island communities and the role and culture of police work within it.
Anna's previous ethnographies include a study of policy making in central government through an extended ethnography of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB), the public body responsible for the oversight of the English and Welsh youth justice system; and a study of the formation and operation of Youth Offending Teams (YOTs), the multi-agency organisations which deliver youth justice services throughout England and Wales. She is the author of Transforming Youth Justice: occupational identity and cultural change (Willan, 2007) and (with Janet Foster and Tim Newburn) of a major Home Office research study of policing in England and Wales after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.
Anna's most recent grants include a Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (2016-17), and a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust small grant (2016-17). She has previously been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2013-14) and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (2004-2007). She has a PhD from the Department of Criminology, University of Keele, an MSc in Social Policy and Administration from LSE and a BA in Literae Humaniores (Classics) from Oxford University. Anna is a member of the British Journal of Criminology editorial board. From 2009-2014 she was external examiner on the Professional Doctorate in Leadership in Children and Young People's Services at the University of Bedfordshire, and in 2016 the external examiner for the Youth Justice programme at the Open University. She is currently external examiner for the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester.
Anna teaches on a number of criminology undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including those on the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice, and she welcomes applications from prospective PhD students.