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A Scottish Parliament committee has supported raising the age of criminal responsibility from eight to 12. Scotland has the youngest age of criminal responsibility in Europe and in the rest of the UK the age is 10. 

The recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case of Sciotto v Fondazione Teatro dell’Opera di Roma serves as a great reminder to employers in the arts industry of the complexities involved in employing fixed-term employees, write John Macmillan and Cono

The Scottish Civil Justice Council (SCJC) has published a summary of the responses to its consultation on the court rules for certain civil cases with a value of £5,000 or less. There were 25 responses to the consultation on the Simple Procedure Rules, which focused on the operation of the rul

At a reception in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday Clan Childlaw announced a new dedicated law service for care leavers. Children and young people with care experience make up around 80 per cent of the children and young people its lawyers work with.

The senior woman at the Scottish bar, Frances McMenamin QC, is to continue her long association with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for at least another six months. Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf has announced that Ms McMenamin’s appointment – she first became a board

Starting soon – a seminar for conveyancers and other land professionals Series begins 26 November and will take place in various locations around Scotland.

Harper Macleod is recruiting additional trainee solicitors to commence in March 2019. The firm's training contracts last two years and feature four six-month seats, often including client secondments.

Populism and human rights will be the subject of a lecture by barrister and academic Professor Connor Gearty in Edinburgh next month. JUSTICE Scotland's Annual Human Rights Day Lecture, chaired this year by Supreme Court Justice, Lord Hodge, will be delivered by Professor Gearty on Monday 10 Decembe

Dozens of criminal justice charities have been gagged by public sector contracts which prevent them from criticising the UK government, The Times reports. An investigation by the newspaper into so-called "gagging clauses" in government contracts suggests that some of Britain's biggest

An American congressman is facing an ethics investigation after his staff allegedly threatened a professor who made fun of his name. Ari Kohen, associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, liked a Facebook post of a Jeff Fortenberry billboard vandalised to read "Fartenberr

Scotland needs more pathologists in order to get the bodies of murder victims back to their families sooner, a criminal defence lawyer has said. A new protocol was announced last week by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to speed up the release of the bodies of murder victims that have

The Law Society of Scotland is asking the legal profession and interested stakeholders for their views on the law providing rights for cohabitants. The consultation aims to stimulate discussion within the legal profession and among other stakeholders and is seeking views in relation to reforming coh

Bruce Wood reflects on the slow pace of change in updating the moveable transactions regime. In The Scotsman on 28 August 2011 I lauded the Scottish Law Commission's discussion paper on the reform of the law on moveable transactions. (More on what those are in a minute.) I pointed out that this

The number of police officers has fallen to its lowest level since the start of 2009, new figures published by Scotland's chief statistician show. The figures reveal that there were 17,147 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 30 September 2018.

In his recent opinion piece, Willie Mcintyre is correct to highlight the poor reporting that we have seen around the consultation on the Children (Equal Protection from Assault) Bill. This bill is not a “smacking bill” and is unlikely to lead to parents going to jail for smacking their c