Public Law
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First parliamentary debate on independence referendum legislation
In March this year, Charles blogged about the introduction to the Scottish Parliament of the ‘paving’ Bill to make provision on the franchise for next year’s independence referendum. Tuesday marked the first Parliamentary debate on the Franchise Bill. The general principles of th...Legal advice on Scotland and the EU – like dark matter
It exists, but you can’t see it (at least not yet). Followers of the independence debate will recall last year’s stramash about whether the Scottish Government had taken legal advice on the question of Scotland’s EU status in the event of independence. To recap, the Scottish Minist...A Case of Firsts – Supreme Court strikes down Scottish Parliament legislation
The Supreme Court has, for the first time, struck down part of an Act of the Scottish Parliament as outside the Parliament’s legislative competence. Salvesen v Riddell concerned section 72 of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003, which allowed a tenant in an agricultural tenancy to secure...Devolution of Air Passenger Duty – a State aid booby trap?
The possible devolution of Air Passenger Duty to Scotland has been in the news recently (don’t pretend you hadn’t seen it!). The notion doesn’t ring any obvious legal alarm bells, but the obscurities of EU State aid law can often be relied upon to throw up unexpected complication...OFT investigates pharmaceutical ‘pay for delay’ agreements
The Office of Fair Trading recently* issued a Statement of Objections to GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”) and three other pharmaceutical companies in relation to alleged breaches of UK and EU competition law. GSK is alleged to have attempted to prevent the introduction of generic anti-depre...The BBC, reporting and the court’s power to grant anonymity
Courts often make orders forbidding the publication of information relating to parties in court and the media sometimes challenge those orders. Such a challenge was made successfully by the BBC in the case of SRC on behalf of NSEC v Ewan Kemp. Here, the court action in question involved medical ...Adjudication and Human Rights
Kirsty posted recently* on a decision in which the Court of Appeal clarified the law on Article 1 of the First Protocol (“A1P1″) to the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR″). As Kirsty noted, that case was a rare example of a court finding in favour of a commercial organisatio...Red card for Real Madrid? EU considers State aid allegations
I cannot confess to knowing much about football, but the recent stories of possible State aid violations involving several large European clubs led me to the BBC Football pages for possibly the first time! The European Commission announced in March that it is investigating five Dutch football c...Leveson, McLeveson and the Meaninglessness of the Super-Majority
Our colleagues on Brodies’ TechBlog posted last week on the various machinations on both sides of the border concerning the Leveson Report, the McCluskey Report (aka “McLeveson”), the “Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of the Press” and the statutory underpinning thereof...Making justice work? Proposed changes to judicial review procedure
As will be known, the Scottish Government invited views on proposals to restructure the way civil cases and summary criminal cases are dealt with by the courts in Scotland. The consultation paper, ‘Making Justice Work’ contains proposals for implementing the majority of recommendations o...A trip to bonny Dundee for the annual SOLAR conference
Last Thursday and Friday, Jackie and I were in Dundee for the annual conference of the Society of Local Authority Lawyers & Administrators in Scotland (which is a bit of a mouthful, and so, helpfully, has been shortened to SOLAR). Likes its name suggests, the conference was attended by various l...Independence Referendum – the date
Alex Salmond has just announced to the Scottish Parliament the date for the Scottish independence referendum: Thursday 18 September 2014. That’s a month earlier than most commentators had thought would be the case – perhaps the debate on the Scottish Government’s proposed transit...