Professor Fiona E. Raitt

Professor of Evidence and Social Justice
Director of the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice

Email: f.e.raitt@dundee.ac.uk

Direct Dial: +44 (0)1382 385141

Room No: 3.04

Degrees

LLB University of Edinburgh
PhD University of Manchester
Solicitor (Law Society of Scotland)
Fellow Higher Education Academy

Biography

Fiona Raitt is Professor of Evidence and Social Justice. She has thirteen years' experience as a practising solicitor in the public and private sectors and is currently Director of the postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Practice. She is the Staff Co-ordinator for the School�s Student Law Clinic. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and the University of British Columbia. She is a member of the Steering Group of the Scottish Civil Justice Network, a project funded by the Scottish Funding Council. She has held a number of public appointments including Examiner in Evidence for the Law Society of Scotland, membership of the Criminal Courts Rules Council, membership of the reference group for Lord Coulsfield's Review of the Law and Practice of Disclosure (2007) and the advisory group for the Scottish Law Commission project on Similar fact evidence and the Moorov doctrine (2010). She is a member of the Scottish Government Witness Communication Issues group and contributes seminars for the Judicial Studies Committee on Vulnerable Witnesses.

Teaching

Undergraduate: Forensic Science and the Law (joint with Centre for Human Identification)

Postgraduate: International Dispute Resolution (distance learning), Diploma in Professional Legal Practice.

Postgraduate supervision: criminal justice and evidence, family law, child law, and gender.

Research

Fiona Raitt's publications range across the areas of family law, evidence and gender, sexual violence and child witnesses. Her research pursues a critical perspective to the construction and interpretation of the rules of evidence. Current projects include a funded inter-disciplinary collaboration in law and science, http://www.scottishinsight.ac.uk/Programmes/Currentprogrammes/ScotsLawofEvidence.aspx

and independent legal representation for complainers of sexual offences.

Press contacts: Matters relating to evidence, family law, child law, and gender.

Selected Publications

Articles

2012 Fiona Raitt, "A Clear and Coherent Package of Reforms? The Scottish Government consultation paper on the Carloway Report�" with P.R. Ferguson in 12 Criminal Law Review, pp. 909-926
2011 Fiona Raitt, "The Carloway Review - A Lost Opportunity" in Edinburgh Law Review, pp. 427-431
2011 Fiona Raitt, "Disclosure of records and privacy rights in rape cases" in Edinburgh Law Review 15(1), pp. 33-56
2010 Fiona Raitt, "Judging Children's Credibility - cracks in the culture of disbelief or business as usual?" in New Criminal Law Review 13(4), pp. 735-757
2007 Fiona Raitt, "Robust and Raring to Go? 'Judges' Perceptions of Child Witnesses" in Journal of Law & Society 34(4), pp. 465-488
2007 Fiona Raitt, "Hearing Children in Family Law Proceedings - can judges make a difference?" in Child and Family Law Quarterly, 19(2), pp. 204-224
2006 Fiona Raitt, "Re-defining Rape" with Pamela Ferguson in Edinburgh Law Review 10, pp. 185-208
2006 Fiona Raitt, "Re-Configuring Scots Criminal Procedure - Seismic Shifts?" with Pamela Ferguson in Edinburgh Law Review 10, pp. 102-112
2005 Fiona Raitt, "The Children's Rights Movement: Infusions of Feminism" in Canadian Journal of Family Law 22(1), pp. 11-41
2004 Fiona Raitt, "Mothers on Trial: Discourses of Cot Death and Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy" with M.S.Zeedyk in Feminist Legal Studies 12(3), pp. 257-278
2004 Fiona Raitt, "Expert Evidence as Context: Historical Patterns and Contemporary Attitudes in the Prosecution of Sexual Offences" in Feminist Legal Studies 12(2), pp. 233-244
2004 Fiona Raitt, "Judicial Discretion and Methods of Ascertaining the Views of a Child" in Child and Family Law Quarterly 16(1), pp. 1-14
2003 Fiona Raitt, "The Evidential Use of "Similar Facts" in Scots Criminal Law" in Edinburgh Law Review 7(2), pp. 174-193
2003 Fiona Raitt, "Credibility and the Limits of Expert Evidence in Scots Criminal Law" in Jur Rev, pp. 29-44
2003 Fiona Raitt, "False Memory Syndrome: Undermining the Credibility of Complainants in Sexual Offences" with M.S.Zeedyk in International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 26(5), pp. 453-471
2001 Fiona Raitt, "Practising as a solicitor in Scotland: professional and gender issues" with G.Siann & M.Callaghan in Scottish Law & Practice Quarterly 6(1), pp. 61-72
2000 Fiona Raitt, "Selection of Solicitors: gender issues" with G.Siann & M.Callaghan in Journal of Gender Studies 9(2), pp. 213-226

Books

2008 Fiona Raitt, "Evidence - Principles, Policy and Practice ", 4th Revised Edition, W Green,Edinburgh ISBN: 978-0414015883
2000 Fiona Raitt, "The Implicit Relation of Psychology and Law - women and syndrome evidence " with S. Zeedyk, 1st Edition, Routledge, London (Shortlisted for the British Psychological Society Book Award 2004) ISBN: 978-0415147828

Book Chapters

2010 Fiona Raitt, 'Independent Legal Representation for complainers in rape trials' in McGlynn & Munro(eds) Rethinking Rape Law - International and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge: London, pp. 267-800)
2009 Fiona Raitt, M. S. Zeedyk 'False Memory Syndrome: undermining the credibility of complainants in sexual offences' in M. Levine(eds) Mental Illness, Medicine and the Law (Article selected for reprint in International Library of Medicine, Ethics and the Law, Ashgate )
2000 Fiona Raitt, 'Gender Bias in the Hearsay Rule' in M. Childs and L. Ellison(eds) Feminist Perspectives on Evidence (Cavendish, pp. 59-77)