Kapil Summan

The Lord Advocate has said she would support non-jury trials in rape cases because they would help clear the criminal backlog. Dorothy Bain QC told MSPs on Holyrood's Criminal Justice Committee that "radical" action needed to be taken and lent her support to Lady Dorrian's review that suggested a pi

Lord Hope of Craighead has recalled how, when sitting in a murder case, he realised police had arrested the wrong individual, "who was then accused and convicted". The crossbench peer was speaking in the Lords in support of amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which contains

Defence solicitors will not enter Edinburgh Sheriff Court today after a member of the profession was removed by police from the court building on Saturday without explanation – and at the behest of a member of court staff. While undertaking its boycott of the custody court, an Edinburgh Bar As

Scholar and sometime strongman Professor James Chalmers has been laying down the law – in the gym. More accustomed to reps with the Stair Memorial Encyclopedia, Professor Chalmers has perhaps found it necessary to toughen up now that he walks the mean streets of Glasgow.

The Scottish courts were used to conduct politics in a 2018 case over the triggering of article 50, the Attorney General, Suella Braverman QC MP, has claimed. In a speech to the 2021 Public Law Project Conference in which she denounced 'political litigation', Ms Braverman said that the flexibility o

An effective response to attacks on judicial independence should come from the bar, a senior American judge told an audience in Edinburgh last night. Nathan L. Hecht, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, delivered the Scottish Council of Law Reporting's 11th annual MacFadyen lecture on the t

Attempts to make online courts the default forum for civil justice do not "make any sense" and are "very much second best" to conducting legal business in person, experts have told Scottish Legal News. Draft rules prepared by the Scottish Civil Justice Council – which are currently out for con

Scotland's three principal bar associations have voted to opt out of a duty solicitor scheme less than two weeks before the most important conference in the world due to continued mistreatment of defence lawyers.

An elderly man has succeeded in challenging the procedural fairness of a hearing in which he was subjected to an experience reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Trial, his lawyer said. In 2019, Dr Denis Paling appeared at Ipswich Magistrates Court in a case concerning unpaid council tax relating to a le

Today's judgment from the Supreme Court concerning two Scottish bills will come "as a shock to the SNP" as it may prevent Holyrood from holding a consultative referendum on independence in the future, one of the UK's leading legal figures has told Scottish Legal News.

More permanent sheriffs may be needed to cope with rising criminal business, the Lord President and Lord Justice General, Lord Carloway, has said.

Judicial salaries have been frozen for a year, new figures from the Ministry of Justice show.

Joshua Rozenberg has pointed out that Dominic Raab, who was recently appointed lord chancellor, arrived late to his swearing-in ceremony yesterday. He may have suffered a wardrobe malfunction, Mr Rozenberg suggests. "Raab is clearly wearing his jabot — the frilly ruff — under the collar

The 'not proven' verdict was returned the least by juries in sexual offence trials between 2016 and 2020, a freedom of information request has shown. In such cases, Scotland's third verdict was used:

A new student clinic at Edinburgh Law School will be the first of its kind in Scotland and only the second in the UK when it opens its doors next month. The Scottish Tax Clinic, run by the university in conjunction with charity partner TaxAid, represents a significant expansion of pro bono tax servi