Opinion

The climate emergency has risen to the top of the UK’s political agenda in recent years, with green issues set to become one of the biggest political hot potatoes of the decade. Last year, the UK legislated for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This was recommended by the Committee on

In the first of her interview series for Scottish Legal News, legal journalist Margaret Taylor interviews Angela Grahame on her time as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.  Angela Grahame QC didn’t just break the mould when she became Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, she complete

A mere "one-and-a-half cheers" for the Inner House's five-judge ruling in Pert v McCaffrey, in which there was "no need" to invoke a doctrine of enrichment's subsidiarity in an analysis that was "much less sophisticated than it needed to be", writes Professor MacQueen. One cheerThe decision of a cou

The Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Bill was introduced into the Scottish Parliament on 2 December 2019. Implementing many of the Scottish Law Commission’s recommendations on reforming the law of defamation in Scotland, it seeks to codify the current piecemeal approach to an ar

Legislation is required to tackle high rents in Scotland as efforts to date have failed to make an impact, argues Mike Dailly. Truth be told we haven’t done much to address unfair rents for more than a century in Scotland.

When is a resignation not a resignation? Douglas Strang looks at a recent case that serves as a cautionary tale for employers. It is obvious that before an employee can claim unfair dismissal it is necessary to show that there has in fact been a dismissal by the employer (save where constructive dis

Dr Kim Barker, lecturer in law at Stirling Law School, and Dr Olga Jurasz, senior lecturer in law at the Open University Law School, look at the proposed reforms to the hate crime regime. The Scottish government is currently considering reforms to the hate crime framework in Scotland. This law

Shirley McIntosh, tax partner at RSM, discusses the challenges facing the legal sector amid changes in property tax. The start of the new tax year on 6 April 2020 will see the latest in a long line of changes in the taxation of property introduced since April 2013, from new and abolished rules, to a

Stephen Webster considers the issues surrounding the reform of commercial leases. This year, following an extensive stakeholder consultation exercise, the Scottish Law Commission (SLC) is expected to make important recommendations for the reform of six areas of Scots law relating to the termination

Ronald Conway responds to Michael Upton's recent reflections on Brexit. So John Cleese famously asked in The Life of Brian.

So Brexit is done. My mother still recalls the news on 19 April 1945, sixteen days before the war’s end, that Germans had executed her grandfather in prison in Copenhagen for membership of the Danish Resistance. His daughter and son-in-law, my Danish grandparents, had themselves not long befor

Jenny Dickson explains what public authorities ought to know about FOI requests, which they are routinely failing to timeously satisfy, if at all. The Scottish Information Commissioner has reported a year-on-year rise in freedom of information (FOI) requests, with an eight per cent increase in reque

Elaine McIlroy details the recommendations for the new post-Brexit single skills-based immigration system. The topic of immigration has been front page news this week across the UK. In Scotland there have been calls for a 'Scottish visa' and devolution of immigration powers. The UK government a

As legal projects, compliance programmes and strategic transactions become ever more complex and multinational in scope, a new breed of professional legal project manager is emerging to help manage the time, quality and cost paradigm, writes Rachel Wood. Thirty years ago the notion that lawyers woul

The SYLA recently published the results of a survey on retention issues within the legal profession. Well done them. Much needed and with the number of responses received totally statistically significant. Seventy-seven per cent of responses were from Glasgow and Edinburgh and 11 per cent from Dunde