THE former deputy president of the UK Supreme Court has said he expects a judgement on the indyref2 case “within six to eight weeks”.
Lord Hope served in the position between 2009 and 2013. The case on whether or not Holyrood can hold a second independence referendum is set to take place on October 11 and 12.
Speaking on The Sunday Show on BBC Scotland, Lord Hope said: “The way the system works is first of all a preparation stage where written submissions go in on behalf of the various parties and they need to be read and understood.
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“There’s 50 pages from the Lord Advocate, 30 from the Advocate General representing the UK Government and there’s also a paper by the SNP focusing on the right to self-determination in international law."
The SNP's written case to the court has been published in full after the SNP successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to submit their own arguments after the Scottish Government’s top law officer, Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, had previously submitted a case.
One of the key arguments made in the SNP’s submission is that the people of Scotland are a “people” for the purposes of the right to self-determination.
It says that the right to self-determination that Scots have is “inalienable and cannot be taken away”.
Lord Hope continued: “Now the Court will assimilate all the written material and then on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, there will be a hearing in public at which the Lord Advocate and counsel for the Advocate General will present their arguments orally.
“Now immediately after the hearing, the justices will retire and discuss the case. That’s the tradition which they’ve adopted and they go immediately to express their views as to what they’ve made of the argument.
“At the end of that process, a decision has to be taken about who’s going to write the judgement or possibly several people write it if there’s a dissent.
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“And it then takes a bit of time to go through various processes until it’s ready to be published. Now, I think, myself, I would expect something like six to eight weeks to go past.
“We’re not talking about many months. This is an important issue, the Court really recognises that and I’m sure it will try to get the judgement out as soon as possible.”
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