(Rescinded Acts, 1640, c. 27). The original fifteen were, in terms of the Act of 1532, nominated by the Crown with the advice and approbation of Parliament; but their successors have received their appointments direct from the Crown, except during a period between 1640 and the Restoration in which Parliament asserted a right to interpone its consent.

As in the case of its predecessors (the old "Session" and the "Daily Council"), the whole Court of Session bench of fifteen sat as a single Court, one or more of their number sitting in rotation in the Outer House to take "informations"; in other words, to prepare cases for hearing. The regular distinction between the Outer and Inner Houses, as Courts of first instance and appeal respectively, was of later introduction, and the constitutional unity of the Court still survives in the technicality which gives to what is really an appeal from the Lord Ordinary in the Outer House to one of the Divisions of the Inner House the name of a Reclaiming Note; in other words, a request for re-hearing merely.

The constitution of the Court remained substantially unaltered from 1532 until 1808 (48 Geo. III c. 151); although, as the result of the Law Commission of 1670, many useful improvements were made in the interests of despatch and economy by the Act 1672, c. 16. In 1808, however, the Court was reorganised in two Divisions of equal authority and competence. This was in effect a duplication of the judicial machinery. Two years later, in 1810, (50 Geo. III c. 112) the three junior Lords of the First Division and the two junior Lords of the Second Division-five in allwere made permanent Lords Ordinary of the Outer House. This may be said to mark the constitution of the Outer House as a proper Court of first instance, and of the Divisions of the Inner House as proper Courts of Appeal. Five judges sat in each Division in the Inner House. Section 32 of this Statute determined the quorum of each Division as consisting of three judges, and still operates to this effect to-day. In 1825 (6 Geo. IV, c. 120) two judges were transferred from the Inner to the Outer House. The Divisions thus came to be composed of four judges each-the present number-while the Outer House was enlarged by the addition of two Lords Ordinary. Only five years later, in 1830 (11 Geo. IV and 1 Wm. IV c. 69), the Lords Ordinary in the Outer House were reduced from seven to five, and the whole Court came to consist (as it does to-day) of thirteen judges in ali.

Proposals for Decentralisation.-The most thorough-going proposals for altering the constitution of the Court of Session submitted by any of the witnesses we examined had decentralisation as their main, and common, feature.

One type of these proposals, put forward by witnesses who were appointed to appear before us by the Scottish Law Agents' Society, was as follows:

(1) to make the first instance jurisdiction of the Sheriff Substitutes in the Sheriff Courts universal, the Outer House of the Court of Session being abolished;

(2) to make the Court of Session a Court of Appeal only, consisting of nine judges organised in three Divisions, whose headquarters would be in Edinburgh; but of which one would sit mainly in Glasgow, while another would be mainly peripatetic, sitting in other principal towns as might be convenient for hearing appealsappellants having, however, their choice of any of the three Divisions.

Another type of proposal, supported by witnesses authorised to appear before us by the Town Council of Aberdeen, was :(1) to retain two of the Outer House Judges, whose headquarters would be in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively, to dispose of Consistorial Actions and Bill Chamber work;

(2) to divide Scotland into three areas-east and south-east, west and south-west, and north-and to apportion one of the three Divisions (constituted in a manner similar to that described in the first proposal) to each of these areas; and

(3) to make the Sheriff Courts the general Courts of first instance, subject to a power on the part of the Sheriff Substitutes to certify-on motion by the parties-any jury trial (above £100 in value) or any proof (above £500 in value) for disposal by any of the eleven judges who would, according to this proposal, compose the Court of Session.

The supersession of the Faculty of Advocates-either immediately or as the result of a process of natural attrition-by transferring the right of audience to all qualified professional lawyers, and the abolition of the office of Sheriff Principal, were corollaries of both these proposals; and both of them admittedly implied a projected fusion or unification of the legal profession.

A third proposal, founded upon a resolution of the Corporation of Glasgow and spoken to by one of its members, was :(1) to keep the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, pending the constitution of a peripatetic Division of the Inner House going to Glasgow on circuit; (2) to establish a branch of the Outer House, consisting of two judges, in Glasgow; and

(3) to assign to those two judges a first-instance jurisdiction over an area comprising the counties of Argyll, Ayr, Bute, Dumbarton, Lanark, and Renfrew.

This proposal, like the others above mentioned, implied the transfer of the right of audience from the Faculty of Advocates to the profession generally-so far at least as regards the proposed Glasgow branch of the Court.

It must not be imagined that the authors of these proposals in any way lack appreciation of the value and importance of the services rendered by a Supreme Court, or that they are under any delusion with regard to the difficulty of preserving, under a system of localised and loosely related tribunals, the advantages

of judicial and forensic training, experience, and knowledge, offered by the Court of Session under existing conditions. To do so would be unfair both to the proposals themselves and to the spirit in which they were submitted for our consideration. What their authors aim at is to preserve these advantages consistently with giving to the litigant and his professional adviser on the spot immediate access to the best possible tribunal. Accordingly, they place in the forefront of at any rate the wider of the proposals above summarised as a condition of their successful operation, without serious loss of quality and efficiency-far-reaching projects for improving legal education in Scotland, and for raising the standard of professional qualification, throughout the whole unified body of practitioners, to a level similar to that expected of members of the Bar. Other proposals, with the same object in view, were suggested for raising the status, prospects, and emoluments of the Sheriff Substitutes in the Sheriff Courts.

To take the Supreme Court (so far as that may be practicable) to the litigant, instead of bringing the litigant to the Supreme Court, may well be considered a benefit; and it was claimed that the performance of the work of preparing and pleading a case by a single qualified man or firm-instead of by a local firm, and an Edinburgh one employing Counsel-would go far to achieve the double object of economy in the cost of litigation, and improvement in the condition and prospects of local practitioners throughout the country.

What, however, was not made clear to us-and what we have not been able to see for ourselves-is how any of these proposals could be put into operation without the destruction, in all but name, of the Supreme Court, and the loss of precisely those higher qualities of judicial service which it is the object of the proposals in question to preserve, while decentralising their source. We know of no instance, in any country, of a Court performing the authoritative and controlling functions of a Supreme Court which is not centralised; and we do not think that those functions can be efficiently performed or even performed at all-by a dismembered Court.

It is clear that if these proposals for decentralisation are to be regarded as conditional upon the levelling up of professional qualifications, in all branches, to the highest present standard, their realisation is relegated to a more or less distant horizon. The fusion of the legal profession-in the sense that a common qualification should be required of all persons entering it, and should admit to practice in all its branches, thus enabling the holder to choose between the Desk and the Bar according to opportunity and aptitude-is an idea which has often been ventilated and has much to commend it. The difficulty lies in fixing the standard of the general qualification. If to an apprenticeship in a legal office there were to be added (as a condition of entering practice) the long and expensive years of study and training necessary to attain the standard implied by (say) the degrees of M.A. and LL.B. at a Scottish University, access to the profession would

be barred against many of those who are able to enter it now, and who make a useful and honourable livelihood in the localities in which they practise. This seems to us a serious consideration.

It cannot be gainsaid that the British plan of associating with the Supreme Court a Bar of specialised pleaders is a powerful, if not an indispensable, factor in producing the quality and efficiency which have raised British law to the position of special respect in which it is universally held. To combine the regular work of the Desk with excursions into the irregular and exacting work of the Bar of a Supreme Court (without detriment to the quality and efficiency of either of two classes of work so essentially different) is an impossible achievement for any but a very few men of exceptional many-sidedness, and they are the very men who would be least willing to incur the loss of time and money involved in such distractions. Besides, it is the constant practice and experience of the Bar rather than general qualifications, however high, that make the pleader and evolve the judge. A centralised Supreme Court provides a field in which their special abilities can be developed, and raised into public view, such as could no more exist under a system of dismemberment than it exists at present in the case of the widely-scattered jurisdictions of the Sheriff Courts. There is a further matter which is not irrelevant to this question. First-class abilities in the solicitor's branch of legal work result in the formation of a business, which survives the maker of it, and is an important asset in relation to the prospects of those he may leave behind him. But the advocate's business is more strictly personal and dies with him. On this whole aspect of the question, we are disposed to regard the proposed decentralisation of the Court of Session, and the consequent dispersion or disappearance of the Faculty of Advocates with which it is associated, as being calculated to strike a damaging blow at the quality of the judicial service of the country-little as that is the intention of those who favour such measures.

Again, we think that it was an accurate insight into some of the possibly less obvious aspects of the problem that prompted the following expression of opinion by a witness familiar with the conditions prevailing in all Scottish Courts: "The influence and "the atmosphere, created by the body of the Court [of Session] is "a factor which does not exist in its component parts. Were the Court to be divided and split up, it would cease to have the cumu"lative effect it now has as a force which develops, and may be "almost said to evolve, the modern Law of Scotland. The collegiate "and corporate influence would be lost by the disintegration of the "Court. The Court, being centralised, permits of free informal "consultation, and (to a certain extent) a unification and a harmony of influence, which would," in the opinion of the witness, be lost also. These considerations lose none of their weight in light of the fact that Scotland, though a small country, possesses a distinctive national System of Jurisprudence of her own, which commands the respect and even the affection of her people, and the conservation and development of which would be hardly more

attainable by a dismembered Court of Session than it would be through the unaided instrumentality of the numerous and independent jurisdictions of the Sheriff Courts.

There are no doubt disadvantages in the circumstance that the city of Glasgow, the industrial and commercial capital of the country, is not also the seat of the Supreme Court. The witness who appeared on behalf of the Corporation of Glasgow brought to our knowledge the interesting fact that in 1596 the City had an opportunity of averting these disadvantages, which was not availed of on account of the expense involved. But, since the days of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Law Amendment Society (prior to the passing of the Sheriff Courts Act, 1853), proposals more or less similar to that outlined above have appeared from time to time. On the other hand, the opinion we have formed against the expediency of decentralising the Court of Session is consistent with the view held by at any rate majorities of the members of such leading bodies as the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, the Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow, and the Chamber of Commerce in Dundee, each of which specially considered the problem of decentralisation before laying its views before us.

It must also be pointed out that-if there are some disadvantages there are also advantages in the segregation of the executive government and judicial administration from the principal seat of industry and commerce. It may be assumed that, in so far as the disadvantages affect the executive and judicial authorities, they are accepted because, having regard to the interests of the country as a whole, there are distinct advantages in a change of venue away from the actual scene in which the disputes particularly incident to commercial and industrial life take their rise. In this connection, it may be noticed that in the United States the rule is that neither the seat of the Legislature nor that of the Supreme Court is in the commercial capital of the State. Thus the Legislature of New York sits in Albany, nearly 150 miles from New York City, and the Supreme Court is domiciled there. So Harrisburg not Philadelphia, Sacramento not San Francisco, are the capital cities of Pennsylvania and· California respectively.

None of the proposals discussed above were related by their authors to any estimate of the cost involved in their adoption as compared with the present cost of the Court of Session. Leaving out of account the preliminary vista of public expenditure opened up by the proposed reorganisation of legal education in Scotland, it is only natural to expect that the charge of maintaining the establishment of a Supreme Court consisting of two or more divisions sitting in different localities would be greater than the charge of maintaining it, undivided, in one centre; and the tendency of these proposals to increase-rather than to diminish -the expense of the establishment would be greatly strengthened if one of the divisions were made peripatetic. Without carefully considered estimates it is impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion on this important aspect of the question; but it seems

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