Nicola Sturgeon’s disturbing attack on the rule of law

Lawyers with an awkward agenda can be a thorn in the government’s side in Scotland as much as in England. Last year, for example, they persuaded the Court of Session to refuse a green light to Nicola Sturgeon’s bright idea for a unilateral Indyref2; and in a much higher profile case a couple of years earlier convinced the same court that the SNP had unlawfully and quite unfairly botched its investigation into Alex Salmond.

But the Scots legal profession is by tradition forcefully independent, if anything even more so than its English counterpart. Broadly, Scottish solicitors are regulated by the Law Society of Scotland, and advocates by the Faulty of Advocates. As well as this the Court of Session exercises an important degree of supervision acting through its Lord President (who, for the benefit of English readers, has a certain amount in common with the Lord Chief Justice). Importantly, however, Holyrood is nowhere to be seen.