Joseph Raymond Doherty, Lord Doherty, (born 30 January 1958) is a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

lawyer and

Senator of the College of Justice The senators of the College of Justice in Scotland are judges of the College of Justice, a set of legal institutions involved in the administration of justice in Scotland. There are three types of senator: Lords of Session (judges of the Court ...

, a judge of the

Supreme Courts of Scotland The College of Justice () includes the Supreme Courts of Scotland, and its associated bodies. The constituent bodies of the national supreme courts are the Court of Session, the High Court of Justiciary, the Office of the Accountant of Court, ...

Early life

Doherty studied at the

School of Law A law school (also known as a law centre/center, college of law, or faculty of law) is an institution, professional school, or department of a college or university specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for bec ...

of the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

(

LLB A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

Hertford College Hertford College ( ), previously known as Magdalen Hall, is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It is located on Catte Street in the centre of Oxford, directly opposite the main gate to the Bodleian Library. The colle ...

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

( BCL) and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

(

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

). He was admitted to the

Faculty of Advocates The Faculty of Advocates () is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. The Faculty of Advocates is a const ...

in 1984.

Legal career

In 1990, he was elected Clerk of the Faculty, holding that office until 1995. He served as Standing Junior Counsel (legal advisor) to the

Ministry of Defence A ministry of defence or defense (see American and British English spelling differences#-ce.2C -se, spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and Mi ...

from 1990 to 1991 and to the Industry Department of the

Scottish Office The Scottish Office was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom from 1885 until 1999, exercising a wide range of government functions in relation to Scotland under the control of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Following the es ...

from 1991 to 1997, at which time he was appointed

Queen's Counsel A King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) is a senior lawyer appointed by the monarch (or their Viceroy, viceregal representative) of some Commonwealth realms as a "Counsel learned in the law". When the reigning monarc ...

. From 1998 to 2001, he was an

Advocate Depute The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service () is the independent public prosecutor, prosecution service for Scotland, and is a Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government. The department is headed by Charles III of the United Kingd ...

The Bench

In April 2010, he was appointed a

, a judge of the

Court of Session The Court of Session is the highest national court of Scotland in relation to Civil law (common law), civil cases. The court was established in 1532 to take on the judicial functions of the royal council. Its jurisdiction overlapped with othe ...

and

High Court of Justiciary The High Court of Justiciary () is the supreme criminal court in Scotland. The High Court is both a trial court and a court of appeal. As a trial court, the High Court sits on circuit at Parliament House or in the adjacent former Sheriff C ...

, the

, taking the judicial title, Lord Doherty. He heard the case brought by a number of Scottish politicians, including

Andy Wightman Andrew Dearg Wightman (born 1963) is a Scottish Independent politician, who served as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region from 2016 to 2021. He was elected as a member of the Scottish Greens, but resigned from the ...

and

Joanna Cherry Joanna Catherine Cherry (born 18 March 1966) is a Scottish lawyer and former politician who was the Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh South West (UK Parliament constituency), Edinburgh South West fr ...

, which sought an answer to the question on whethear the United Kingdom could unilaterally withdraw its notice of its intention to leave the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. Lord Doherty refused permission for judicial review, but this decision was overturned by the Inner House of the Court of Session."Appeal judges grant permission to proceed in legal challenge over revocability of Article 50"
Scottish Legal News, 20 March 2018 It was announced on 17 February 2020 that Lord Doherty had been appointed to the Inner House of the Court of Session with effect from December 202

He was appointed to Her Majesty's Privy Council on 12 April 2022 allowing him the honorific The Right Honourable.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Doherty, Raymond 1958 births Living people Members of the Faculty of Advocates Doherty Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford Harvard Law School alumni 20th-century King's Counsel Scottish King's Counsel Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom