Faculty tribunals

Not surprisingly John McCluskey (Letters, 6 March), responding to my accusation of hypocrisy, avoids defending the rules he lived by for 50 years, opining that anyone dissatisfied with them can go to "court or to a tribunal". He doesn't defend them because they are indefensible. I know from experience.

By tradition the faculty and not the courts disciplines its members. The Dean operates the rules with wide discretion under undefined and unprescribed powers delegated by the Lord President, a faculty member, who has supervisory oversight of the faculty, which again is deemed rather than prescribed. In short the faculty's power is whatever the Lord President/Dean says it is.

Under faculty rules valid conduct complaints are determined either by committee or tribunal. The committee is a purely written process judged by a 4-person committee with faculty chair.

If a complaint is upheld by a committee – member found guilty of bringing the faculty into disrepute in mine – the member can refuse to accept and opt for a tribunal, an option said by the dean to be a member's right. This represents an inequality of rights beyond parody.

My complaint was taken over by the faculty which prosecuted the member in its own terms before a tribunal dominated by faculty members. I had no status, other than as witness, to the faculty's unsuccessful prosecution.

When faculty members exercise their right to choose the tribunal route, there is no adjudication of a citizen's complaint. Consequently there is no ruling a citizen can take "to court or to tribunal"?

Joseph Heller probably based Catch 22 on faculty rules.

TOM MINOGUE

Victoria Terrace

Dunfermline

Thomas Crooks, writing about rulings by the Law Society or the Faculty of Advocates (Letters, 10 March), misses the point.

Most bodies, public or private, from professional organisations to commercial undertakings and golf clubs, have rules about discipline, professional misconduct and the like, governing matters from dress codes to professional or even moral behaviour. Self-regulation about such things is common.

However, when it comes to questions of legal rights, and especially the legal rights of non-members, whether against members or against the organisations themselves, then the citizen is not bound in any way by decisions made by these bodies. Self-regulation processes in no way impinge on the legal rights of the public. The legal rights and obligations of the citizen and of the lawyer, employee or golfer are regulated by the law and the courts.

Courts are not bound in any way by decisions made by such bodies, whether of a private or of a public character. Mr Crooks' suggestion that the courts use such decisions to grant "immunity" to lawyers is wholly without foundation.

If your correspondent has evidence to the contrary, he should disclose it. I know of no evidence that supports such a view.

JOHN McCLUSKEY

Lansdowne Crescent

Edinburgh