Criminal Law Reform in Scotland
DOI | 10.3366/elr.2015.0302 |
Published date | 01 September 2015 |
Date | 01 September 2015 |
Author | |
Pages | 399-403 |
In December 2014, the Scottish Law Commission announced the appointment of two new Commissioners. Scottish Law Commission, “News: new Commissioners”, 23 December 2014, available at Prior to Maher's appointment in 2000, the Commission addressed criminal law projects somewhat intermittently: see C H W Gane, “Criminal law reform in Scotland” (1998) 3 SLPQ 101. Scottish Law Commission,
Criminal law has featured significantly in the range of legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament and, given the political salience of crime and justice issues, will almost certainly continue to do so. For a survey of reforms until 2010, see P R Ferguson, “Criminal law and criminal justice: an exercise in ad hocery”, in E E Sutherland, K E Goodall, G F M Little and F P Davidson (eds),
Perhaps the simplest approach for the government to take is to deal with law reform in-house, issuing a consultation paper followed by a Bill in due course. This has the attractions of both relative speed and the absence of any requirement for additional expenditure.
A current example of this approach is the consultation paper
Scottish Government,
Ibid at 6. See Scottish Government and COSLA,
This is not the place to discuss the merits of these proposals, but the consultation on “non-consensual sharing of private, intimate images” highlights the limitations of the government's approach. The research basis for the proposal consists of approximately one page of text referring to a seemingly arbitrary selection of jurisdictions: South Australia, Queensland, Germany, Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey and England and Wales (appearing in that order). In all cases, weblinks are provided for the relevant legislation, not always to authoritative versions. In the case of Germany, the reference is to an English translation of the German
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