JUSTICE CLERK OF SCOTLAND, is now the second president of the Court of Justiciary in Scotland, being originally the clerk of court of the chief justice, or Lord Justice General of Scotland.
At the institution of the Court of Session in 1532, the justice clerk was made one of the judges. This will not surprise us when we con sider the constitution of that court. It was essentially an ecclesiastical tribunal, and, agreeably to the practice of such, deliberated in secret with shut doors. It was necessary therefore for the security of the crown that some of the crown officers should be continually present. The justice clerk was one of these : he was public prosecutor on behalf of the crown. The king's treasurer was another ; and accordingly both these were lords of session.
A further rise of official dignity took 'place : for it having become usual to appoint certain lords of session as assessors or assistant judges to the lord justice-general, the justice clerk began in the early part of the 17th century to be appointed to that duty ; and about the middle of the same century he had acquired the style of " lord justice clerk." In ten years afterwards the privy council declared the justice clerk a constituent part of the justice court; and in 1672, he was made president of the Court of Justiciary, to preside in absence of the justice-general. His rise in the Court of Session followed • for in 1766, when 31 iller, afterwards Sir Thomas Miller of Olenlee, took his seat on the bench, it was, by desire of the court, on the right of the lord president; to which latter office he himself afterwards rose, being the first justice clerk so promoted. And in 1811, when the Court of
Session, was, by 48 Geo. III., e. 151, divided into two chambers, the lord justice clerk was made ex officio president of the second division.
With respect to the justice clerk depute, that officer was long so termed ; but when the justice clerk acqnirecl the style of lord, and became a constituent part of the Court of Justiciary, his depute came to be termed " the principal clerk of justiciary," and this becoming a sinecure, be got himself a " depute" about the middle of last century, and 'the second depute in due course an "assistant ; " all of whom, except the first sinecure office, the holder of which was a few years ago Wright off by government, continue to this day, and are in the gift of the lord justice clerk.
Besides these there are three other justice clerk deputes, and his appointees. They are commonly called the "circuit clerks," being hie deputies to the three circuits of the Court of Justiciary. They had their origin in the act 1587, c. 82, which directed such circuits to be made, in place of the former practice of the justiciar passing through the realm from shire to shire successively.