William Adam Wilson


William Adam Wilson FRSE was a Scottish lawyer who served as Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh. As an author he was known as W. A. Wilson and informally as Bill Wilson.
The University of Edinburgh's W. A. Wilson Memorial Lecture, inaugurated in 1995, is named in his honour.

Life

Wilson was born in Glasgow on 28 July 1928 the son of Anne Adam and Hugh Wilson, her husband. He was educated at Hillhead High School.
He studied law at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1948 with an MA and again in 1951 with an LLB. He practiced as a solicitor for several years before becoming a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in 1960. In 1965, he was made a senior lecturer. In 1972, he became the first Lord President Reid Professor of Law at the University. He became Dean of the Law Faculty in 1976.
In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Neil MacCormick, Kemp Davidson, Lord Davidson, Michael Yeoman, and John Terence Coppock.
He died in Edinburgh of cancer on 14 March 1994.

W. A. Wilson memorial lectures

  • Lord Rodger, – "Thinking About Scots Law"
  • James Gordley – "Contract and Delict"
  • Sir Anthony Mason – "Negligence and the Liability of Public Authorities"
  • Eric Clive – "Law Making in Scotland"
  • Joe Thomson – ?
  • Keith Ewing – "Constitutional Reform and Human Rights"
  • Shael Herman – "Specific Performance: a Comparative Analysis"
  • Horatia Muir Watt – "European Integration"
  • Vernon Palmer – "Two Rival Theories of Mixed Legal Systems"
  • Lord Hope of Craighead – "The Strange Habits of the English"
  • Hector MacQueen – "Scotland's First Woman Law Graduates"
  • Lionel Smith – "Scottish Trusts in the Common Law"
  • George Gretton – "On Law Commissioning and Other things"
  • Robert Stevens – "Insults"
  • Reinhard Zimmermann – "Damages in European Contract Law"
  • David Snyder – "Metamophoses in the Law of Contract"
  • John Blackie – "Historically Informed Law Reform"

    Publications

  • Trusts, Trustees and Executors
  • Debt
  • ''Introductory Essay on Scots Law''