Scottish Human Rights Law Group

The court observed in passing that a decision by the Scottish Legal Aid Board to grant legal aid for sheriff court proceedings, rather than for an action in the Court of Session might amount to a refusal of access to the courts to the petitioner.  This would be a contravention of Article 6 of the Convention, where by reason of …

The petitioner sought to challenge the Convention compatibility of new criminal procedure rules (introduced by the Act of Adjournal (Criminal Appeals) 2003), which appeared to require that that appeals against sentence had to be made in writing and were to constitute the appellant’s submissions.

The Inner House considered the compatibility of Scottish practice in civil cases before the Court of Session of automatically granting with the summons a warrant authorising diligence on the dependence (allowing the freezing of the defender’s moveable assets) and inhibition on the dependence (impeding the sale of heritable property in Scotland), pending final resolution of the action, unless any diligence …

The Inner House expressed doubts about the applicability in Scotland of the policy and procedural considerations underlying the seven judge decision of the House of Lords in Arthur J S Hall v Simmons [2002] 1 AC 615
Full report available here

After extensive discussion of other United Kingdom rather than Strasbourg authorities an Extra Division of the Inner House reached a decision to the same effect as that found in Scottish Ministers v Doig in refusing the reclaiming motion noting as follows:
“[24] Article 7 of the Convention, headed ‘No Punishment Without Law’, provides as follows: ‘(1)    No-one shall be held guilty of …