Last month, the Scottish judiciary launched an excellent new website (even the reliably-bilious Peter Cherbi described it as ‘quite good’!). It has a great deal of material which was previously inaccessible, ranging from all travel and subsistence expenses claimed by individual salaried judicial office holders to summaries of significant sentencing statements in the courts; even a Twitter feed, for the benefit of journalists rather than lawyers or the public. An enormous improvement on the tired and convoluted Scottish Courts Service website, the site shows care at every level. One small but politically-significant example is the domain, which as Iain Nisbet has explained is sensibly ‘org.uk’ rather than the governmental ‘gov.uk’: something the UK Supreme Court couldn’t manage in spite of cogent judicial criticism. Something I particularly liked is the use at many points of FAQs.
This is a written version of my talk to the Scottish Public Law Group annual conference on 7 June 2010. A note on vocabulary; I take the word ‘standing’ from English law to wrap up both title and interest to sue; and ‘locus standi’ is simply the Latin for standing.
It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the Scottish law of title and interest to sue in public law matters is over-restrictive and in need of reform. It seems to me, indeed, that this area of law is obsolete and unfit for purpose; that is simply a polite way of saying that it is in a mess. There is not universal agreement on this: the few who seem to think that our rules of standing are actually adequate seem for the most part to be members of the College of Justice. Yet it is that group who are responsible for the law being in the state it is in.
How did things get into this state?
What is hidden underneath the debris?
How can it get cleaned up?
At long last, the Scottish Legal Aid Board and the Scottish Government have promulgated regulations for legal aid in the unified tribunal system. There’s plenty of evidence that legal representation makes a substantial difference to success rates in the tribunals, so this is welcome, although the effect of the regulations is patchy. This post gives a brief description of the proposed scheme and its background. There will be fuller discussion at this conference on 14 June.
The Scottish Public Law Group’s annual conference for 2010 will be held on Monday 7 June at the Playfair Library in Old College, Edinburgh University. The full programme is available here. This will be fully booked so get your place quick.
In what seems to be an odd coincidence, there were two apparently unrelated developments this month concerning the systemic problem of delay in civil appeals in the Inner House: one in Edinburgh, one in Strasbourg where the European Court of Human Rights considered the practice and procedure of the Court of Session.
This post quotes in full a recent response by the Office of the Advocate General to a freedom of information request by Alan Caskie, an advocate specialising in asylum and immigration law. This response shows that the success rate for petitions in this area is high, and rising year by year. Awards of expenses are an acid test of success; there may be many reasons why no award is asked for or made, but if one is asked for and made it is reasonably clear that the paying party lost.