Transcript

Scott Manson

Judges play a central role in the Scottish legal system. Not only do judges administer justice in Scotland, the constitutional explanation for that is that the judges administer the Queen's justice throughout the country. And that justice includes not only criminal justice and bringing wrongdoers to heel, but also delivering justice between people who have disputes with one another. So judges play that central role.

But another critical role that judges play that the general public perhaps don't understand until they begin to study law is that judges themselves make and shape the law by deciding cases in a particular way. We only in this country get so much of our law from what Parliament tells us when they pass legislation in the House of Commons and the House of Lords or in the Scottish Parliament.

But judges have to interpret that legislation, and a judge's decision as to what a particular piece of legislation means then becomes itself law that is applied by other judges and lawyers.

Equally, there is a whole body of law in Scotland that doesn't come from Parliament at all and is simply handed down from generation to generation by court judgments. So I can be in court tomorrow. I could be arguing a point of law that I say exists only because a judge 100 years ago said it existed in a case. And because that judge did it, and that judge is a more senior judge than the judge I'm in front of tomorrow, the judge I'm in front of tomorrow has to do what the judge 100 years ago tells him to do.