PROPOSALS to transfer all civil cases, including the 11,000 divorce actions handled each year in Scotland, to the already overburdened sheriff court system, raises more questions than answers. The sheriff courts are already the busiest of their kind in Europe. Despite ongoing reforms, their business remains firmly in arrears. Apart from their huge workload of criminal cases, they also dealt with 125,000 more minor civil actions in 2006. A study drawn up by Lord Gill, Lord Justice Clerk, suggests that moving even complex civil actions relating to property, reparations and commercial issues would free up the time of more senior judges. On the surface, such streamlining makes eminent sense at the top end of the legal scale. But it fails to explain how a finite number of sheriffs and fiscals will cope with an expanded agenda, particularly where the arcane specialist knowledge demanded of those whose forte is corporate law or divorce legislation comes into play. While senior judges might be left with more time on their hands to rule on the major cases, their junior colleagues would inevitably find themselves submerged in even more work.

PROPOSALS to transfer all civil cases, including the 11,000 divorce actions handled each year in Scotland, to the already overburdened sheriff court system, raises more questions than answers. The sheriff courts are already the busiest of their kind in Europe. Despite ongoing reforms, their business remains firmly in arrears. Apart from their huge workload of criminal cases, they also dealt with 125,000 more minor civil actions in 2006. A study drawn up by Lord Gill, Lord Justice Clerk, suggests that moving even complex civil actions relating to property, reparations and commercial issues would free up the time of more senior judges. On the surface, such streamlining makes eminent sense at the top end of the legal scale. But it fails to explain how a finite number of sheriffs and fiscals will cope with an expanded agenda, particularly where the arcane specialist knowledge demanded of those whose forte is corporate law or divorce legislation comes into play. While senior judges might be left with more time on their hands to rule on the major cases, their junior colleagues would inevitably find themselves submerged in even more work.

Lord Gill's submission on the issue is aimed at ensuring cases are dealt with at the appropriate level and as swiftly as possible, given the limitations of court time. It is part of a two-year review designed to reshape the framework of Scotland's legal establishment. In doing so, it also encroaches on the politically sensitive area of the constitution. The Court of Session has a pedigree and role dating back to the Act of Union in 1707 and should not be tampered with lightly. Some experts say, however, that its jurisdiction might benefit from a more focused agenda, and that cases heard in the sheriff courts, where an outcome hinged on important and complex points of law, could still be referred there for final adjudication. Judicial reviews where public bodies potentially faced being held to account would also continue, rightly, to be within its exclusive remit. Delicate cross-border or international disputes and some family law where large sums of money were involved might also be better handled in a higher court.

Scotland's prosecutors, the Procurator-Fiscal Society, have been fighting a rearguard action against further caseloads for years on the grounds that reforms would work only if they had more staff, funding and training to make it happen. But there are signs of progress in some quarters. A pilot project in West Lothian earlier this year managed to reduce the time taken to process suspects in criminal proceedings from an average 21 weeks from arrest to sentencing to a new average of just eight. It was the result of a common-ground approach adopted by police, lawyers, social workers and fiscals. Lord Gill's study, intended to create the same effect on a grander scale, deserves further debate.