NEWS

The Right Honourable Lord Pentland will be sworn in as head of the Scottish judiciary on Monday, 3 February, with the ceremony available to watch live on the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service website from 10am.

A recording of the event will also be made available afterwards on the SCTS website for anyone unable to watch as it happens.

Lord Pentland has been appointed by His Majesty the King and will succeed the Right Honourable Lord Carloway who is retiring from post after serving as Lord President since 2015.

During the ceremony, the Royal Warrant appointing Lord Pentland will be read to the Court before his Lordship takes the Oath of Allegiance and the Judicial Oath.

Lord Pentland will then take his place on the bench and make a speech to the Court before it adjourns.  

Lord Pentland has been a judge of Scotland’s Supreme Courts (the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary) since 2008. He has presided over a number of high-profile criminal trials as well as significant civil cases and has been an appeal court judge since 2020.

Between 2014 and 2018 he was chairman of the Scottish Law Commission, the country’s independent law reform body.

Lord Pentland was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1982 and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1995. He served as an Advocate Depute (Crown prosecutor in the High Court) between 1991 and 1994.

In 1995, he was appointed Solicitor-General for Scotland and held this office until 1997. He then returned to practice at the Bar, specialising in commercial law and public law.

Earlier in his career, Lord Pentland was standing junior counsel to the Department of the Environment in Scotland. He also held appointments as Chairman of the Police Appeals Tribunal and as Chairman of the Appeal Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. Between April 2001 and May 2002, he was Chairman of the Public Inquiry into a serious incident of limestone mining subsidence in the Gilmerton area of Edinburgh.