The Emerging Authority of Crown Office in the Imperial Age: A Discussion Paper

Abstract

Although Crown Office is central to the Scottish criminal justice system there has been little modern study of the history of the department and no attempt to locate it within the Scottish constitutional arrangements. Consideration is given here to the evolution of the administrative headquarters of the public prosecution system from the mid-Victorian era when great cohesion was brought to the system through to the statutory intervention of 1927 that consolidated the independent position of the local public prosecutor albeit subject to Crown Office direction.