Ailsa Carmichael, Lady Carmichael
Ailsa Jane Carmichael, Lady Carmichael is a Scottish advocate and judge who has served as a Senator of the College of Justice since 2016.
Early life
Ailsa Jane Carmichael was born on 28 November 1969 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, the eldest of two daughters to Ian Henry Buist Carmichael and Jean Cowie Carmichael. Her father was an advocate and worked for the Scottish Legal Action Group. Carmichael's younger sister Heather is an advocate, working in Westwater Advocates.In 1986, after leaving school from fifth year, Carmichael attended the University of Glasgow School of Law. She studied abroad at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and worked in law firms in Amsterdam. In 1990, she graduated with an LLB and gained a Diploma in Legal Practice the following year.
Legal career
After receiving her Diploma in Legal Practice in 1991, she undertook a bar traineeship with Simpson & Marwick in Edinburgh after which she was admitted as an advocate in 1993, and devilled for sheriff J.A. Baird and for S.J. MacGibbon. From 2000 to 2008 she was standing junior counsel to the Home Office in Scotland, appearing in many judicial reviews and statutory appeals relating to immigration and asylum. She was junior counsel to the Fingerprint Inquiry, which investigated the use of fingerprint evidence in the case of Detective Constable Shirley McKie.She took silk in 2008.
Carmichael specialises in public and administrative law. She served as an advocate depute, as a member of the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland, and as a part-time sheriff.
From 2011 to 2014, Carmichael was a tutor in human rights at the Diploma in Legal Practice course at the University of Edinburgh.
In a judgement published on 21 October 2021, Carmichael found that the environmental agency NatureScot had erred in law in failing to give reasons for issuing licences for the killing of beavers.