The Problem of the Supreme Court

Readers in England and other less-fortunate lands may not have been following the latest stushie in Scotia new and braw. This time it’s the law that’s the problem. Or rather, the UK Supreme Court’s ability to rule on Scottish appeals on Human Rights and other EU-related business. Last week this led to the conviction of Nat Fraser, imprisoned for the murder of his wife Arlene, being quashed on the not unreasonable grounds that the Crown had failed to disclose vital evidence that cast some doubt on the most important part of the case against Mr Fraser. Kenneth Roy, sage of Kilmarnock, has an excellent summary of the affair.

Cue much rumpus and uproar and the predictable sight of politicians embarrassing themselves on television and in the popular prints. The independence of Scots law is not to be denied and we’ll have no foreign judges interfering thank you very much. There’s something to be said for this, though it might have been more convenient for the SNP to have thought so before enthusiastically supporting the incorporation of ECHR into Scots law.