Gonnae no

Scottish law, civil and criminal, is a very different beast to that of England and Wales. It’s full of glorious terms such as delict, caution (pronounced to rhyme with “station”), and lewd and lascivious. Being English court-goers, we won’t pretend to know much about it*. 

What we do know for certain, however, is that as in the rest of the UK, no judge in Scotland uses a gavel. Which led us to react with a deal of surprise to the front page of the National (”The newspaper that supports an independent Scotland”).

It seems that on the website as well as on the front page of the paper edition, its journalists think that a challenge to the election of Alistair Carmichael MP will be adjudicated by a gavel-toting, black-gowned member of HM Judiciary.

You can almost hear the grinding of teeth in the tea room of the Faculty of Advocates.



*There’s an excellent guide to Scots legal lingo on the Scottish judicial website.