- Title Pages
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Table of Cases
- Foreword
- 1 Sir Gerald Gordon: An Appreciation
- 2 Corroboration and Distress: Some Crumbs from Under the Master’s Table
- 3 Child Defendants and the Doctrines of the Criminal Law
- 4 Codification of the Criminal Law
- 5 Public and Private Wrongs
- 6 The Idea of Principle in Scots Criminal Law
- 7 A Human Right to a Fair Criminal Law
- 8 The Pain of Pleasure: Consent and the Criminalisation of Sado-Masochistic “Assaults”
- 9 The Mental Element in Modern Criminal Law
- 10 Theft by Omission
- 11 Statutory Rape and Defilement in Ireland: Recent Developments
- 12 Don’t Look Back in Anger: The Partial Defence of Provocation in Scots Criminal Law
- 13 “The Most Heinous of all Crimes”: Reflections on the Structure of Homicide in Scots Law
- 14 Witness Anonymity in the Criminal Process
- 15 Disclosure Appeals: A Plea for Principle
- 16 Crown Counsel: From Sir Archibald Alison to Lord Brand
- 17 The Codification of Criminal Procedure
- 18 The Summary Jurisdiction to Punish for Contempt of Court in Scotland
- 19 Sir Gerald Gordon: A Bibliography
- Index
Crown Counsel: From Sir Archibald Alison to Lord Brand
Crown Counsel: From Sir Archibald Alison to Lord Brand
- Chapter:
- (p.286) 16 Crown Counsel: From Sir Archibald Alison to Lord Brand
- Source:
- Essays in Criminal Law in Honour of Sir Gerald Gordon
- Author(s):
Robert S Shiels
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
This chapter examines the role of Crown counsel. The position of Crown counsel is pivotal in the system of public prosecution in Scotland. By whatever means the authority of Crown counsel is manifest in practice, individually or collectively they constitute the controlling mind of the system of public prosecution. In the period under consideration all Crown counsel were members of the Bar but their independence from the remaining parts of the legal system (essentially the solicitors) meant that they constituted a core executive, responsible for co-ordinating and arbitrating both prosecution policy in the general sense, decisions as to proceed to trial or not, and the actual conduct of cases in the High Court of Justiciary.
Keywords: Crown counsel, public prosecution, Scots law, prosecution policy
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Table of Cases
- Foreword
- 1 Sir Gerald Gordon: An Appreciation
- 2 Corroboration and Distress: Some Crumbs from Under the Master’s Table
- 3 Child Defendants and the Doctrines of the Criminal Law
- 4 Codification of the Criminal Law
- 5 Public and Private Wrongs
- 6 The Idea of Principle in Scots Criminal Law
- 7 A Human Right to a Fair Criminal Law
- 8 The Pain of Pleasure: Consent and the Criminalisation of Sado-Masochistic “Assaults”
- 9 The Mental Element in Modern Criminal Law
- 10 Theft by Omission
- 11 Statutory Rape and Defilement in Ireland: Recent Developments
- 12 Don’t Look Back in Anger: The Partial Defence of Provocation in Scots Criminal Law
- 13 “The Most Heinous of all Crimes”: Reflections on the Structure of Homicide in Scots Law
- 14 Witness Anonymity in the Criminal Process
- 15 Disclosure Appeals: A Plea for Principle
- 16 Crown Counsel: From Sir Archibald Alison to Lord Brand
- 17 The Codification of Criminal Procedure
- 18 The Summary Jurisdiction to Punish for Contempt of Court in Scotland
- 19 Sir Gerald Gordon: A Bibliography
- Index
