Features

This week Fraser Myers in Spiked questioned if it was right in a country which allegedly protects its citizens rights to free speech, that the media can hardly cover more than the basic outline of the biggest Scottish political story for years. It was inevitable that the question of the strict limit

A dead lover, traces of poison and series of letters that led to a middle-class woman on the stand – the case of Madeleine Smith held all the characteristics of a scandal to rock Victorian Scotland. True crime enthusiasts are in for a treat as the University of Dundee’s Leverhulme Resear

Morgiane Noel explores the ethical issues arising from the use of artificial intelligence in the criminal justice system. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become such a part of our daily lives that it’s hard to avoid – even if we might not recognise it. While ChatGPT and the use of algor

Gavin Pearson, managing director and head of Quantuma’s forensic accounting & investigations team, sets out a number of areas that may assist lawyers in the drafting of expert determination clauses. There will be contrasting views as to how effective Expert Determination is as a form of di

Douglas Strang and Kate Ross explain the protections the Equality Act 2010 provides for non-binary people. The Act provides protection to transgender people against discrimination, harassment, and victimisation in the workplace. Until the decision of the Employment Tribunal in Taylor v Jaguar L

Sheila Webster is in chipper mood when we catch up on Teams. Though she recently broke her shoulder tripping over a desk in the office, she has just had her sling removed and, while she is still in some pain and reliant on her husband – Themis Advocates KC Andrew Webster – for lifts, she

Becoming a parent is one of the most significant events in many people’s lives and for some they may choose to consider the option of surrogacy. Surrogacy is when a woman carries and gives birth to a baby for another person or couple, known as the “intended parent(s)”. There are tw

Benjamin Bestgen and Alexander Jeuk discuss the practicalities of rebalancing the scales of justice making the legal system accessible to everyone. The complaint that the law tends to favour the wealthy and powerful while being much less available to the impecunious is not new. And there is much evi

A recent disclosure to Companies House highlights the value that UK businesses can derive from taking out cyber insurance cover, writes Christian Toon. The Law Gazette reported how the company behind conveyancing firm Simplify was able to recover from its insurance provider the majority of cost

The many, and systematically horrible, events in the southern states of America over many years in the middle of the last century are described in Margaret Burnham’s new book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. The phrase ‘Jim Crow’ is an American shorthand for

The next few months are set to see two important cases making their way through the Court of Session, both of which concern the meaning of sex within the Equality Act. The first is the appeal of Petition of for Women Scotland [2022] CSOH 90 and the decision of Lady Haldane that sex means sex as modi

Scottish Legal News editor Kapil Summan speaks to historian and former Supreme Court justice, Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, at his home in London. They discuss criminal reforms; the limits of law; the decline in legislative drafting in the UK; free speech and the need to stand up to the new cult

But a city is more than a place in space. It is a drama in time. Edinburgh is - the most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution which is manifest everywhere in the city. – Patrick Geddes. Keynote lecture, London University, July 1904 Few innovative thinkers have been

New figures showing that the number of people dying as a result of workplace incidents in Scotland has reached its highest level since 2019 have prompted urgent calls for reforms to corporate homicide legislation, writes Bruce Craig. Provisional data published by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (

It can be tempting to skip over environmental clauses in leases as just being "boilerplate". However, in the context of environmental contamination, to do so could have unexpected and costly implications for landlords and tenants. In the current market, environmental and sustainability provisions ar