A Royal Commission for Visiting the Universities and Colleges in Scotland was appointed on 23 July 1826. Its members were: the Duke of Gordon; the Duke of Montrose; the Marquis of Huntly; the Earl of Aberdeen; the Earl of Rosebery; the Earl of Mansfield; Viscount Melville; Lord Binning; Lord President Hope; Sir William Rae, Lord Advocate; Lord Justice- Clerk Boyle; Chief Baron Sir Samuel Shepherd; William Adam, Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court; John Hope, Solicitor General; George Cranstoun, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; Dr Taylor, Moderator of the General Assembly; and Dr Cook, former Moderator. A supplementary commission of 28 September added to this list the Earl of Lauderdale, Sir Walter Scott, the Rev Dr Lee, Henry Home Drummond, advocate, and James Moncrieff, advocate. This was a distinguished body of the great and the good of early- nineteenth-century Scotland. Of these, Lauderdale, Rae, Boyle, Adam, Cranstoun and Moncrieff had studied at Glasgow under John Millar, who there had held the Regius chair of Civil Law from 1761 to 1801.

A special sub-commission that included five of Millar's pupils visited the University of Glasgow, and on 9 January 1827 took evidence from Robert Davidson, Millar's successor. What these Commissioners discovered at their alma mater cannot have pleased them. When the report of the Royal Commission was published in 1831 it resolutely stated: “It is perhaps scarcely necessary to observe, that it is only in the University of Edinburgh that a full course of instruction in the Science of Law can with propriety be established; at least in the present circumstances of the country.” The report stressed that law ought to “be studied as a liberal and enlightened science”, so that students did not “enter on practice at the Bar without any acquaintance with the general principles of Jurisprudence, and with limited and contracted views of the subject of their profession”.