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What do the following behaviours have in common: shouting and swearing, painting graffiti, killing a fox by kicking it, glue-sniffing, cross-dressing in public, dangerous driving, discharging a fire-arm, engaging in a roof-top prison protest, throwing a lit firework in a bus, attempting to commit suicide, making threatening gestures, and kerb crawling? Incredibly, each of these behaviours has been successfully prosecuted in Scotland as the crime of ‘breach of the peace’. This book describes and critiques this commonly prosecuted crime. The author traces the development of the crime from the mid-19^th century to the present day, and also considers related statutory offences. The latter include those offences created by the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, and the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. It is argued that breach of the peace remains an overly broad and ill-defined crime – despite the appeal court’s attempts at narrowing its definition.

This book is the only in-depth guide to Scotland’s freedom of information (FOI) regime. Written by Kevin Dunion, the first Scottish Information Commissioner, it provides detailed commentary on the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. It is fully referenced, using the Commissioner’s own decisions and court judgements and provides a unique insight into the Commissioner’s role in determining appeals and ensuring adherence to the Code of Practice. It considers key issues of interpretation that have arisen since the law came into effect, including those exemptions concerning personal information, official advice, and the formulation of policy. It also covers the application of the ‘harm’ and ‘public interest’ tests. It includes a fully annotated version of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, along with case studies that illustrate the practical application of the legislation. It also includes a detailed interpretation of the Environmental Information Regulations, and highlights important differences between these regulations and general FOI law. It considers the state of FOI in Scotland by comparing it to provisions and developments in the rest of the UK and internationally.

This book describes how mediation is currently being developed and used in a number of areas in Scotland. Illustrated with case studies drawn from real life, it highlights the basic skills of a mediator, explores what works in different practice areas and looks at the things that different mediation approaches have in common, along with the differences between them. As a comparative guide to the different areas of mediation that are developing across Scotland, it gives an overview of the breadth and diversity of mediation in the country. It also provides an insight into the work of the Scottish Mediation Network (SMN). Each of its chapters stand alone, so readers with a particular area of interest can easily find information relevant to their particular field. The contributors to the book are all members of the Scottish Mediation Network Board, the Scottish Mediation Register Standards Board or the SMN staff team.

This book is a summary of protection orders for adults at risk in the Scottish Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 - council duties, assessment, removal and banning orders. There are live examples from the author’s practice in social work from 1978 onwards. The author was involved in writing the Act code of practice.

This book explains the extent and nature of the changes that have taken place in housing law in Scotland during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and sets out the current law relating to housing in the country. It shows that Scots law on housing has changed in many ways during this time, along with the rights of individuals to buy and rent housing. It highlights the fact that, while the picture is still scarred by homelessness, poor-quality housing and various forms of exploitation, the majority of Scottish residents in the twenty-first century have far greater protection than their forebears enjoyed at the start of the twentieth century. It explains that, in addition to the constraints of the Rent Acts and the Housing Acts, there is now legislation to protect citizens from some forms of discrimination and abuse of their recognised human rights.

This book provides a full history of the Alliance Trust, a Dundee-based financial institution that is one of Scotland's oldest and most interesting companies and the UK's largest general investment fund. The book describes how the Alliance Trust began life in Dundee in 1888 as a mortgage company financing farmers in the American West. It goes on to explain how the Trust inherited the business of several Dundee-based mortgage companies that had lent, wisely and unwisely, on large and small tracts of land in Oregon, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. The book shows that the Trust was an industry leader from the outset but that, unlike some of the companies it had acquired, it soon built a reputation for stability and prudence. It then describes how the Trust discovered oil on some of the land that it owned in the USA and how the economic difficulties of the inter-war years necessitated a change of business strategy, with the Trust making the transition from lending on mortgages to investing in securities. It details how the Trust enjoyed the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, fought its way through the troubles of the 1970s and, when better times returned in the 1980s, extended its reach, first into asset finance and then into retail savings and investment products.

This highly successful bookbrings together academic and practicing lawyers to consider the key legalissues facing the United Kingdom as it becomes a progressively more mature hydrocarbon province. The book, now in its second edition, considers and analyses the petroleum licence and fiscal regime. It also discusses the offshore oil industry’s dedicated regulatory regime (health and safety and environmental regulation are both considered, alongside the decommissioning regime on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf) as well as considering the key commercial and contractual issues facing the industry after forty years of oil and gas production on the UKCS.

This book considers topical issues relating to rights of privacy and other rights of personality in Scots private law in its unique historical and comparative context as Europe’s only “mixed” (Roman/English) system of private law. Themes include the creation of a system of private law rights of personality (eg bodily integrity, personal security, physical liberty, reputation, privacy and dignity); the introduction of rights of privacy; the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights; the debate on rights of publicity (eg rights to the commercial exploitation of celebrity images); and the operation of personality rights in important specific areas of law such as intellectual property and medical law.

This book contains the main provisions of the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2004 with a commentary informed by the authors’ experience of vulnerable witnesses in practice. The Act created a new regime for civil and criminal cases so that the vulnerability of witnesses is to be considered and measures taken to support children and adults who meet the criteria of vulnerability to give evidence effectively. The introduction explains the origins and development of the use of special measures in criminal cases. Chapters 1-5 cover criminal cases. They explain the definitions of the key provisions such as vulnerable witness and the criteria of vulnerability, describes, and assesses the efficacy of, the individual special measures, the procedure to be followed when applying for special measures, their application to the accused, the process of review and miscellaneous amendments to existing criminal justice legislation. Chapter 6 sets out the history of the introduction of the measures in civil proceedings, the process for seeking measures for child and adult vulnerable witnesses and the practical issues that may arise given the nature of civil proceedings. Chapter 7 considers the abolition of the competence test for witnesses in criminal and civil proceedings. The appendix reproduces the forms of procedure to be used in applying for or reviewing the use of special measures and other related purposes.