The Scots Statute-Style and Substance

Abstract

New or renewed legislatures afford opportunities for reassessing old legislatures, and introducing new and improved forms of legislative composition. Thus the North American experience, derived from the breakaway Colonies, came down heavily against referential legislation, the Australian and New Zealand experience implemented many Benthamite reforms ahead of the Old Country, and the tabula rasa afforded generally by Colonial and Commonwealth legislation at first enabled, and eventually enforced on its parent legislature, an explicit and consistently adhered to system of textual amendment. In view of the opportunities afforded by Scottish Devolution, what innovations may we expect of the new Scottish statute? Thanks to the earlier work of Coode, to the continuing surveillance of the Statute Law Society, to the committed enthusiasm of parliamentary counsel such as Driedger, Dale, and Bennion, and especially to the seminal work of linguistic analysts such as Plowden, Mellinkoff, Frye, and Bowers, new theories, practices, forms, and precedents abound as never before for statute law. Nevertheless, there are also questions of tradition, culture, and national identity at issue-especially for a restored or reborn legislature such as the present Scottish Parliament. This paper examines some of the issues, both in terms of legislative style and legislative substance, which pertain to the new Scottish statute.