Alan Page, Constitutional Law of Scotland
| Pages | 253-254 |
| Author | |
| Date | 01 May 2016 |
| Published date | 01 May 2016 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2016.0356 |
Alan Page's excellent volume on Scotland's constitutional law is a welcome addition to the authoritative SULI series. The book is without rival as the leading account of Scotland's internal constitution and will be much relied upon by practitioners and academics alike. It does everything one would expect of a modern SULI book, and Professor Page deserves the thanks and praise of lawyers across the country.
Alan Page is a constitutional lawyer who has long understood that it is the government – the executive branch – on which public lawyers should concentrate. This view is out of fashion, with the vast majority of academic public lawyers in the United Kingdom narrowly focusing now either on appeal court case law or on constitutional theory. Professor Page finds little space for either. Discussion in chapter 1, for example, of the Union character of the United Kingdom state, is brief and, throughout the book, the impression is never given that Scotland's is a constitution primarily made by judges.
Scotland's constitution, on this account, is plainly not a common law one. Further, not only is the constitution a creature primarily of legislation, but interpretation of that legislation by political actors and their officials is as significant as it is in case law. Standing orders and official documents are given as much prominence in Professor Page's account as are citations to the law reports. When it comes to “checks...
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