(643)  JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS: JAB AND COUNTER-JAB

Sheriff Douglas Cusine, formerly a professor at Aberdeen Law School, entered the controversy about the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland (see previously No 463) with a critical article published in the Scots Law Times on 26 January 2007 (2007 SLT (News) 9).  Sheriff Cusine argued that the system was one in which good people were not being appointed to the bench and some were being deterred from applying; while the process also opened up the possibility of bad appointments.  The Judicial Appointments Board was moved to a detailed rejoinder, published in the Scots Law Times for 27 April 2007 (2007 SLT (News) 79).  Both contributions worth reading and containing food for thought, not least (to an academic) for the parallels being drawn in both articles with university appointments systems.  Meanwhile, still no sign of legislation to make the JAB, as it were, legal”. “