North of the Border
| Published date | 01 October 1967 |
| Date | 01 October 1967 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X6704001012 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
accepted as a prohibited benefit under the 1964 Act. The ad-
vantage was said to be
"too
intangible ".
It
seems probable that the prosecutor felt that the statutes were
aimed. in part at least. at preventing attractive devices which en-
couraged the winner to continue playing. The Court. of course,
did not investigate the aims of Parliament but merely confined
itself to statutory interpretation.
In R. v. Scammell [1967] 3 All E.R. 97. a case of causing death
by -dangerous driving. the Court of Appeal in the brief extract
from its judgment in the report said that
"careless
driving may
well be dangerous though all careless driving is not necessarily
dangerous driving".
It
felt that Judges in such cases are right in
their habit of stopping the defence from raising the point that
the driving in question was merely careless and so could not be
dangerous. This line of approach could only confuse a jury
and
should be prevented.
Although this last point must be accepted it cannot hide the
basic problem
that
the law is by no means clear and the apparent
hierarchy of road traffic offences has been hopelessly entangled in
practice.
Edited
by
W.
A.
RATCLIFFE
Assistant Chief Constable of Glasgow
Many generations of policemen have pored over the pages of
A Practical Treatise on the Criminal
Law
of Scotland by J. H. A.
Macdonald. some for the improvement of their minds
and
others
in the hope of passing the police (Scotland) examinations. Mac-
donald was responsible for the first edition published in 1867.
and was still involved when the third edition was printed in 1894.
During this period the
"thoughts
of Queen
Victoria"
exercised
great influence and in Scotland were a powerful supplement to the
morality of
John
Knox and Calvin. The fifth edition. in 1948.
was edited by J. Walker (now
Lord
Walker)
and
D. J. Stevenson.
It
showed many changes in detail but followed the same general
lines of the earlier editions. My first experience was with the
third edition (though somewhat later than the year of publication)
and this is the one I always preferred. I must confess I did not
have a very high regard for Macdonald and looked forward to
its replacement in the series of books being published under the
482 October 1967
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