The Lord President of the Court of Session is head of the judiciary in Scotland, and presiding judge (and Senator) of the College of Justice and Court of Session, as well as being Lord Justice General of Scotland and head of the High Court of Justiciary, the offices having been combined in 1836. The Lord President has authority over any court established under Scots law except for the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
The office of Lord Justice General is derived from the justiciars who were appointed from the twelfth century (or even earlier). From around 1567 it was held heritably by the Earl of Argyll until the heritability was resigned to the Crown in 1607. Scotstarvet lists it as a Great Officer of State in his famous treatise of 1754.
The current Lord President, Lord Gill, was sworn in on 11 June 2012. His deputy is Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice Clerk.
In Scotland the Official Oath is taken before the Lord President of the Court of Session. In England that role is performed by the Clerk of the Privy Council.
Read more about Lord President Of The Court Of Session: Officeholders
Famous quotes containing the words lord, president, court and/or session:
“The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant is the lord that shall be.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“You are, or you are not the President of The National University Law School. If you are its President I wish to say to you that I have been passed through the curriculum of study of that school, and am entitled to, and demand my Diploma. If you are not its President then I ask you to take your name from its papers, and not hold out to the world to be what you are not.”
—Belva Lockwood (1830–1917)
“Of all things in life, Mrs. Lee held this kind of court-service in contempt, for she was something more than republican—a little communistic at heart, and her only serious complaint of the President and his wife was that they undertook to have a court and to ape monarchy. She had no notion of admitting social superiority in any one, President or Prince, and to be suddenly converted into a lady-in-waiting to a small German Grand-Duchess, was a terrible blow.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The bar is the male kingdom. For centuries it was the bastion of male privilege, the gathering place for men away from their women, a place where men could go to freely indulge in The Bull Session ... the release of the guilty anxiety of the oppressor class.”
—Shulamith Firestone (b. 1945)