Court reforms to come in with new legal year
Scotland's civil court reforms will start to be seen in practice from the new legal year in September, the Lord President announced today.
Unveiling the timetable at a Digital Justice conference in Glasgow, Lord Gill said that reforms taking effect then will include:
- the establishment in Edinburgh of a sheriff court with a Scotland-wide jurisdiction for personal injury cases;
- the extension of the exclusive jurisdiction of the sheriff court to actions with a value of up to £100,000;
- the establishment of the Sheriff Appeal Court, at first with jurisdiction for criminal cases and after January 2016 with jurisdiction also in civil cases; and
- the introduction of the permission stage to judicial review proceedings.
From July, the process of appointment of the new summary sheriffs will begin, with the new simple procedure they will manage being introduced in spring 2016.
Repeating his assertion that the reforms will "bring the court system into the modern world", the Lord President added that improvements in information and communication technology were also fundamental to their success: "My prediction is that we will move quickly towards the paperless court, towards the filing of writs from the lawyer’s desk; towards the virtual court with remote access by judges, lawyers, clerks and witnesses, and towards hearings that are no longer based on oral evidence."
Lord Gill went on to say that "If the continued independence of the Scottish legal system is a cause worth fighting for, our courts must meet the needs of the litigant. Unless the courts can provide a justice system that is expeditious, economical and excellent, Scots law faces atrophy and our independent legal profession faces an uncertain future."
The legal system "should be a driver for economic progress in Scotland", and this could happen if Scotland became a forum "that not only retains litigations that at present go elsewhere but also becomes a forum of choice for litigations from abroad".
Regretting that the country's judges and lawyers had not seen the opportunithy of Scotland becoming an international centre for resolving oil and gas industry disputes when North Sea oil was being developed, but welcoming the subsequent success of the commercial court in the Court of Session established by Lord Penrose, Lord Gill announced: "I wish to build on that. It is therefore my intention to launch a feasibility study into the creation of an Energy & Natural Resources Court in the Court of Session to provide a specialist forum for litigations in these fields." This could sit in, for example, Glasgow or Aberdeen if the need arose.
He concluded by calling for "a concerted effort by all judicial office holders" to meet the responsibility to litigants, the public and the profession to ensure that the judiciary had control of the business of the courts, and "avoid a relapse into the bad old ways".