Malcolm MacDonald Combe

The Indycamp: Demonstrating Access to Land and Access to Justice

In late 2015, a camp was set up in the vicinity of the Scottish Parliament, on landbelonging to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. What became known as the ‘Indycamp’ comprised a collection of tents, motor vehicles, caravans and trailers, along with the campaigners who brought these items themselves. The campaigners - the (self-styled) Sovereign Indigenous Peoples of Scotland - had hoped to remain there until Scotland became independent from the rest of the United Kingdom. However, court action brought by the landowner in the Court of Session resulted in an order to remove the camp. Following an unsuccessful reclaiming motion against that order,1 the Indycamp was cleared on 4 November 2016. The legal process to clear the camp raised some interesting points of law, primarily in relation to access to land, demonstrations, and access to justice. This note considers these issues in turn.

Selling intra-curricular clinical legal education

A well-run student law clinic can bring benefits to its local community and to the students who participate in the initiative. The many shapes and sizes of law clinics mean that the model adopted can have an impact on the mix of community benefit and student benefit that any particular project brings. One key potential difference between clinical programmes is whether an intra- or extra-curricular model is employed, with the question of whether one is preferable to the other being a difficult one to contend with when considered in the light of the (often equally valid) competing interests that exist. This article makes a case for the practical and tactical decision of introducing an academic, credit-bearing element to student clinical legal activity, drawing on a literature review of clinical legal education (CLE) sources, lessons from experiences of CLE and survey data from volunteers at the Aberdeen Law Project, the University of Aberdeen’s student founded and, until recently, extra-curricular organisation.