Why Scotland is losing faith in its legal system

Watching the outcome of the Donald Trump trial and his ferocious attack on the legal system that convicted him, we catch our collective breath. How can politics so fundamentally pollute the independence of the law? Surely, we say, nothing like that could possibly happen here?

There have been a few bruises, of course. When Boris Johnson attempted to prorogue parliament in 2019 to ease the passage of Brexit, he was seen off by the Supreme Court in London and the Court of Session in Edinburgh. When Nicola Sturgeon tried to push through an independence referendum in defiance of the devolution settlement, she had to concede defeat.

An early attempt to give the Scottish parliament the right to sack judges was famously punctured by the late