Scots law is the legal system of Scotland. Considered a hybrid or mixed legal system, with a mixture of civil law and common law elements, it traces its roots to a number of different historical sources. Together with English law and Northern Ireland law, it is one of the three legal systems of the United Kingdom. It shares some elements with the two other systems, but it also has its own unique sources and institutions.

Early Scots law before the 11th century consisted of a mixture of different legal traditions of the various cultural groups that inhabited the country at the time, the Picts, Gaels, Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Norse. The introduction of feudalism from the 11th century and the expansion of the Kingdom of Scotland established the modern roots of Scots law, which was gradually influenced by other, especially continental, legal traditions. Although there was some indirect Roman law influence on Scots law the direct influence of Roman law was slight up until around the 15th century. After this time, Roman law was often adopted in argument in court, in an adapted form, where there was no native Scots rule to settle a dispute; and Roman law was in this way partially received into Scots law.

Scots may refer to:

SCOTS may refer to:

List of Scots is an incomplete list of notable people from Scotland.

Professor Adam Tomkins is a British legal scholar and John Millar Professor of Public Law at the School of Law of the University of Glasgow.

Tomkins was educated at the University of East Anglia (LL.B.) and the London School of Economics (LL.M.). He taught at the School of Law of King’s College London between 1991 and 2000 and became a fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford in 2000, before being elected to the John Millar Chair of Law at Glasgow in 2003. His research interests lie in constitutional theory and history, British, EU and comparative constitutional law, and republicanism.

Professor Tomkins has published seven books in the areas of constitutional, administrative and European Union law, including two, Public Law (2003) and British Government and the Constitution (2007, with Colin Turpin), which are amongst the most widely used by law students in the United Kingdom.

Professor Tomkins is a member of the group, Republic, a British republican organisation advocating the replacement of the monarchy with a democratically-elected head of state, and has published Our Republican Constitution, a republican re-interpretation of the United Kingdom's constitution which claims that the constitution is deeply influenced by republican principles, despite its monarchic nature.

Her Majesty's Advocate (or when the monarch is male His Majesty's Advocate), known as the Lord Advocate (Scottish Gaelic: Morair Tagraidh), is the chief legal officer of the Scottish Government and the Crown in Scotland for both civil and criminal matters that fall within the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament. He or she is the chief public prosecutor for Scotland and all prosecutions on indictment are conducted by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, nominally in the Lord Advocate's name.

The officeholder is one of the Great Officers of State of Scotland. The current Lord Advocate is The Rt. Hon. Frank Mulholland, QC.

The office of Advocate to the monarch is an ancient one. The first recognised Lord Advocate was Sir John Ross of Montgrenan, recorded in 1483 as serving King James III.

From 1707 to 1998, the Lord Advocate was the chief legal adviser of the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Crown for Scottish legal matters, both civil and criminal, until the Scotland Act 1998 devolved most domestic affairs to the Scottish Parliament. The United Kingdom government is now advised on Scots law by the Advocate General for Scotland.