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the business, particularly in the Outer House, will, we think, remain to seek. The defects of the existing system were prominently brought before the Law Commission of 1868 by a former Dean of Faculty (Mr Alexander Asher, Q.C., M.P.); and the main lines of the recommendations we make at the end of this Chapter are in accord with the suggestions which he submitted for consideration. It is, no doubt, desirable that a case which has once been dealt with by a particular Lord Ordinary should go back to him for its later stages; but there need be no difficulty in achieving that object without the maintenance of so many separate rolls and offices.

The division of the work between the Inner and Outer Houses has already been dealt with. It will not be necessary to reflect this division in the organisation of the Office of the Court. In the unified office, the formal distinction hitherto maintained between Inner and Outer House processes would practically disappear, and would be replaced by a classification applicable to the business of the entire Court which would become the basis of the office organisation. The distinction between actions originating in the Court of Session by Summons, and proceedings originating there by Petition, indicates at once that the main dividing line should be between a "General Department " and a " Petition Department." Special Cases and Appeals from Inferior Courts would naturally fall into the General Department along with actions originating in the Court of Session by Summons.

With regard to the Petition Department, it is obvious that it would be appropriately manned by the members of the already specialised staff in the Bill Chamber. A somewhat high degree of specialisation is essential even in the clerical work connected with large classes of petitions in which the statutory and other technical requirements are unfortunately intricate and sometimes minute; and, if the changes recommended above were carried out, the present Bill Chamber staff would have to add to its existing attainments as it would no doubt be able to do-familiarity with the minutiae of Company procedure.

A third Department in the Office of the Court would consist of the existing Teind Office and its staff. As the result of the Church Act, 1925, all the work of the Commissioners of Teinds which still remains will in future originate in the Outer House, the function of the Inner House being merely that of a Court of Appeal. It will be many years before the final localities on the statutory augmentations, and the settlement of the teind rolls, can be completed. Procedure in the former is by summons, procedure in the latter is by a simple form of application. The highly specialised staff of the Teind Office would thus appropriately be left in control of the teind list.

The main body of the work of the Court (actions originating in the Court of Session by Summons, Special Cases, and Appeals from Inferior Courts) would belong to the General Department. It could only be shewn by experience whether any further specialisation of the staff would be necessary or desirable within this Department. But, as regards actions originating in the Court of

Session by Summons, it would be convenient to form separate Lists of (1) Ordinary Causes, (2) Admiralty and Commercial Causes, and (3) Matrimonial Causes. This classification follows out the differences that characterise the procedure in these distinct classes of actions; and, if the changes recommended in this report are to receive effect, it would be useful to keep these three classes in separate Lists. The special procedure-and often the urgency of matrimonial causes requires special attention; and an Admiralty and Commercial List provides the appropriate means of setting apart commercial and shipping cases which—under the recommendations made in Chapter V of this Report with regard to them—will also have their own specialities in procedure, and demand despatch. It would, we think, also be necessary to keep separate Lists for Special Cases, and for Appeals from Inferior Courts and Authorities.

It will be seen that (as already pointed out) the proposed organisation of the work before the Court-and of the Office of the Court --makes it unnecessary to departmentalise the work of the Inner House separately from that of the Outer House. So long as a case remains in the Court of Session, the relative process will remain in the appropriate department (and on the appropriate List) in the custody of the same officials in the office, and the papers will be sent to the one House or the other according as the nature of the case, or the stage which the proceedings have reached, may require.

The distribution of business in the Court, and the corresponding organisation of the clerical staff, would be as follows:--

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Each case presented to the Court-to whichever of these departments it may belong-should be identified on presentation by a current annual and serial number, which should be marked upon each paper produced in it.

While the formal division and sub-division of the unified Office suggested above is necessary for a true conception of our scheme, we do not contemplate that-apart from the Teind Office -the staff shall be completely departmentalised or that individual members of it shall be exclusively attached to only one department of the work. The classification of the work should not be allowed

to interfere with the homogeneity of the staff and the liability of every member of it, under the supervision of the Principal Clerk, to assist in any department or sub-department as may be required. We deal in Chapter X with the problem of reorganising the staff.

The following is a summary of the recommendations we make on the above points :

(1) THAT THE BILL CHAMBER SHOULD BE ABOLISHED ;

(2) THAT ALL THE ACTIONS NOW KNOWN AS "INNER HOUSE ACTIONS" AND ALL PETITIONS (EXCEPT THOSE SPECIFIED ON pp. 51 (LAST PARAGRAPH) AND 52 HEREOF) SHOULD BE INITIATED EXCLUSIVELY IN THE OUTER HOUSE;

(3) THAT ALL PROCEEDINGS INITIATED IN THE COURT OF SESSION SHOULD PROCEED EITHER BY WAY OF SUMMONS OR BY WAY OF PETITION ;

(4)

THAT THE SYSTEM OF MARKING SHOULD BE ABOLISHED;

(5) THAT THE PRINCIPLE AT PRESENT FOLLOWED OF HAVING SEPARATE STAFFS AND OFFICES FOR THE DIVISIONS, THE FIVE LORDS ORDINARY, AND THE BILL CHAMBER, RESPECTIVELY,

SHOULD BE ABANDONED;

(6) THAT THE OFFICES OF THE COURT SHOULD BE UNIFIED UNDER A PRINCIPAL CLERK AND ROLL-KEEPER, WHO, WITH AN ASSISTANT OR ASSISTANTS, SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE (UNDER THE LORD PRESIDENT) FOR ALLOTTING BUSINESS TO THE DIVISIONS AND THE LORDS ORDINARY RESPECTIVELY, AND FOR ATTENDANCE OF A CLERK OR CLERKS UPON THEIR COURTS, AS CIRCUMSTANCES MAY REQUIRE ;

(7) THAT THE ORGANISATION OF THE WORK OF THE UNIFIED

OFFICE SHOULD BE BASED ON THE CLASSIFICATION ABOVE SET FORTH;

(8) THAT PETITION WORK SHOULD BE UNDER THE SPECIAL

BUT NOT NECESSARILY EXCLUSIVE CHARGE OF A SECTION OF THE

STAFF CORRESPONDING TO THE PRESENT BILL CHAMBER staff;

(9) THAT THE EXISTING TEIND Office staff should be left

IN CHARGE OF TEIND CAUSES.

Assignment of special duties to particular judges.-The abolition of the Bill Chamber, and the proposed transfer of its work to the Petition Department of the Outer House, will entail the disappearance of the "Lord Ordinary on the Bills," and will obviate the appropriation of any special duties to the " Junior Lord Ordinary." Under present arrangements, the Junior Lord Ordinary is the judge of first instance in the Bill Chamber during session (53 Geo. III c. 64, s. 2). During vacation his duties are performed in rotation by all the judges of the Court of Session, except the Lord President and Lord Justice Clerk.

We are not in favour of the rigid assignment of special duties to particular judges. The number of the judges in the Court of Session is too small to allow of the principle of specialisation being

carried far; and we think the balance of advantage is in favour of giving as complete freedom as possible to the Office of the Court (under direction of the Lord President) in the distribution of the work among the judges who are for the time being available for it. There is no reason why the first instance work of the proposed Petition Department of the Outer House should be appropriated exclusively to any particular judge or judges. It should be made competent for any Lord Ordinary to dispose of it; and this applies, not merely to what is at present proper Bill Chamber work, but also to petition and other work that is assigned by various statutes to "the Junior Lord Ordinary." It may, no doubt, be found convenient in the administration of the Office of the Court to distribute, as a general rule, most of the Petition work among two, or possibly three, of the judges of the Outer House with particular experience or special qualifications; all the more so because, in many cases at least, it will be necessary that a petition should go through all its stages before the same judge. But this should, we think, be left to administrative. regulation rather than be the subject of hard-and-fast enactment.

It is at present the practice for the Inner House to remit the details of Company petitions for Liquidation to a particular Lord Ordinary-who, however, holds no special appointment as Liquidation judge. The proposed transfer, inter alia, of Company petitions from the Inner to the Outer House will obviate this procedure; but again, it will no doubt be found convenient in the administration of the Office of Court to confine this class of work generally to one or two of the Lords Ordinary in the Outer House.

Exchequer causes are appropriated by statute (19 and 20 Vic. c. 56, s. 2) to a specially appointed Lord Ordinary as judge of first instance; and Teind causes are similarly appropriated to the Second Junior Lord Ordinary (53 Geo. III c. 64, s. 3; 6 Geo. IV c. 120, s. 54). Owing to the special character of the classes of work, particularly the latter, there is convenience in these appropriations, and we do not propose that they should be interfered with, except as indicated on pp. 99-101 hereof.

We recommend that ANY WORK WHICH IS AT PRESENT APPROPRIATED, BY LAW OR BY STATUTE, TO THE LORD ORDINARY ON the Bills, or TO THE JUNIOR LORD ORDINARY, SHOULD BE MADE COMPETENT BEFORE ANY LORD ORDINARY IN THE OUTER HOUSE.

Control of forms and procedure.-As a Supreme Court the Court of Session has always had the widest common law powers of internal regulation, and has used them extensively for the improvement and simplification of its forms and procedure. Those powers are exercised by Act of Sederunt, that is, by a formally minuted resolution of the whole Court in private session. A draft of the proposed regulations is first circulated among the judges and these are submitted to the meeting, formal or informal as the case may require, at which it is discussed and put into final shape before being passed. When passed, the Act of Sederunt is, according to present-day practice, sent to the Secretary for Scotland in order

that it may be laid on the tables of both Houses of Parliament, and either House may, within thirty-six days after laying, resolve that it shall not continue in force, in which case it ceases to be binding.

Up to and during at least the greater part of the eighteenth century, the Court of Session made use of Acts of Sederunt, not merely for regulating forms and procedure, but also for laying down general rules for the administration of the law in certain departments in which uniformity was an urgent desideratum. Since the end of the eighteenth century this practice has fallen into disuse, and general rules of the kind have been regarded as reserved to the domain of Parliament. But the powers of the Court have all along been, and increasingly are, invoked by Parliament to frame rules for the administrative execution of statutory provisions of all kinds. Some of these concern the Sheriff Courts, the Commissary Courts, and other courts of lower jurisdiction; others concern Building Societies, Judicial Factors, the Merchant Shipping Acts, and last but not least (among many more) the Workmen's Compensation Acts.

In 1913 the Court of Session passed a consolidating Act of Sederunt codifying the whole body of rules contained in prior Acts of Sederunt so far as still operative. The volume of current legislation has required the passing of a considerable number of new Acts of Sederunt since then. All the Acts are printed by the Stationery Office, and can be obtained by the public separately. They are also reprinted annually in the Parliament House Book issued by a private publisher.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century a large number of Acts of Parliament have been passed for the purpose of amending and improving legal proceedings in the Scottish Courts and in the Court of Session in particular. Most of these make positive enactments, often in much detail, regarding the forms and procedure to be followed in a great variety of the departments of Court work. Large portions of even the oldest of them still remain unrepealed, or repealed only in part, or (more confusing still) repealed only "in so far as inconsistent with " later Acts (48 Geo. III c. 151; 1 and 2 Geo. IV c. 38; 6 Geo. IV c. 120; 11 Geo. IV and 1 Wm. IV c. 69; 1 and 2 Vic. c. 86; 1 and 2 Vic. c. 118; 2 and 3 Vic. c. 36; 13 and 14 Vic. c. 36; 20 and 21 Vic. c. 18). In all of them the power of the Court of Session to regulate its own procedure is utilised, but only for the restricted purpose of carrying the particular enactments of the Statutes in question into effecta material qualification of the inherent powers of the Court, however necessary it may have been in the circumstances. The most recent of the series of Acts referred to, namely, the Court of Session Act, 1868 (31 and 32 Vic. c. 100, s. 106), recognises, in more generous measure, the proper powers of the Court in these matters, and allows alterations to be made by Act of Sederunt in "the course of proceeding herein before prescribed in respect to the matters to which this Act relates, or any of them." But this enactment gave no power to modify any of

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