Judiciary of Scotland

The judiciary of Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Breitheamh na h-Alba) are the judicial office holders who sit in the courts of Scotland and make decisions in both civil and criminal cases. Judges make sure that cases and verdicts are within the parameters set by Scots law, and they must hand down appropriate judgments and sentences. Judicial independence is guaranteed in law, with a legal duty on Scottish Ministers, the Lord Advocate and the Members of the Scottish Parliament to uphold judicial independence, and barring them from influencing the judges through any form of special access.

The Lord President of the Court of Session is the head of Scotland's judiciary and the presiding judge of the College of Justice (which consists of the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary.) The Lord President is Lord Pentland, who was appointed in February of 2025. The Lord President is supported by the Judicial Office for Scotland which was established on 1 April 2010 as a result of the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, and the Lord President chairs the corporate board of the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.

The second most senior judge is the Lord Justice Clerk, and the other judges of the College of Justice are called Senators. When sitting in the Court of Session, Senators are known as Lords of Council and Session, and when sitting in the High Court of Justiciary they are known as Lords Commissioners of Justiciary. There are also some temporary judges who carry out the same work on a part-time basis.

Scotland's sheriffs deal with most civil and criminal cases. There are 6 sheriffdoms, each administered by a sheriff principal. Sheriffs principal and sheriffs are legally qualified, and previously serve as either advocates or solicitors, though many are also King's Counsel. Summary sheriffs deal exclusively with cases under summary procedure, and some advocates and solicitors serve as part-time sheriffs. In 2014, Justice of the Peace courts replaced the previous district courts. In Justice of the Peace courts, lay justices of the peace work with a legally qualified clerk of court who gives advice on law and procedure. Justices of the peace handle minor criminal matters.

The head of the judiciary in Scotland is the Lord President of the Court of Session whose office dates back to 1532 with the creation of the College of Justice. Scotland's judiciary was historically a mixture of feudal, local, and national judicial offices. The first national, royal, justices were the justiciars established in the 12th century; with there being either two or 3 appointed. The justiciars and their deputes would go on circuit to hear the most serious of cases that could not be heard by the local feudal or sheriff courts, in a comparable (but not identical) manner to Assizes in England.^{[citation needed]} In the Middle Ages, many Scots were subject to the local feudal lords, with only treason reserved to the royal courts. These feudal jurisdictions, called heritable jurisdictions, were abolished in 1747 by the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746.

The sheriff courts developed in the Middle Ages as royal courts to challenge the authority of the local feudal courts, though the office of sheriff became itself a heritable jurisdiction with a legally qualified sheriff-depute the effective judge. The jurisdiction of the sheriffs was re-organised into twelve sheriffdoms following the passage of the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1870 The number of sheriffdoms was reduced to six in 1975, with only minor changes to the territorial extent of each sheriffdom since then.

Locally administered courts continued until the replacement of the district courts by justice of the peace courts in 2008, and now all Scottish courts are administered centrally, with all judges, except the Lord Lyon and the justices of the peace, appointed on the recommendation of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland. Due to the volume of business, some legally qualified stipendiary magistrates sat in Glasgow, when following the Court Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 the office of stipendiary magistrate was abolished, and several stipendiary magistrates became summary sheriffs.

Today, the Scottish judiciary are divided into the Senior Judges, the Senators of the College of Justice, the Chairman of the Scottish Land Court, the Lord Lyon, the Sheriffs Principal, the Appeal Sheriffs, Sheriffs, Part-time Sheriffs, Summary Sheriffs, Part-Time Summary Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and Tribunal Judges.