Scottish Human Rights Law Group

The Privy Council ruled that the consequence of the decision of the High Court of Justiciary in Starrs v. Ruxton – which the then Lord Advocate Lord Hardie of Blackford declined to appeal – was that all criminal proceedings before temporary sheriffs from 20 May 1999 [2] were in principle unsustainable because afflicted by fundamental nullity.
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[1] Millar …

Percy v Church of Scotland Board of National Mission concerned a claim by an associate minister in a parish of the Church of Scotland that she had suffered unlawful sex discrimination in the handling of an allegation of misconduct made against her, namely that she allegedly had an affair with a married elder in the parish.  The employment tribunal dismissed …

In McGibbon v. McAllister the Lord Ordinary held that the right to sue for damages in respect of the death of a child should be extended to include step-parents, on the basis that to exclude a step-parent in the position of the pursuer would be discriminatory and incompatible with Article 14 when taken together with Article 8 of the European …

This was a petition for judicial review by a developer of a decision by the Scottish Ministers to call in an application for listed building consent, and to appoint a reporter to hear a public inquiry in relation to that application following the notification of opposition to the proposed development by Historic Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish Ministers.   …

The House of Lords held that a hearing on the evidence was not an essential component of a fair trial in a case where the judge was satisfied that as the litigant’s averments were irrelevant.  No good purpose would be served by continuing the case to establish whether the litigant was able to show that his averments were true.
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