Intra-Professional Status, Maintenance Failure, and the Reformation of the Scottish Civil Justice System

Abstract

Abstract The Scottish civil justice system is undergoing its most substantive transformation in over 150 years. This reformation will create new judicial bodies, alter the jurisdictional reach of courts, and drastically unsettle what has been, up to now, a highly stable institutional field. These changes have caused pronounced threats to the status of different groups of actors in the field. Our work examines the impact of these threats, and the varying responses among groups of professional actors. In so doing, we detail how intra-professional status differences and uncertainty hindered attempts to maintain threatened institutions.