He said they aimed to be as "flexible" as possible, and pointed out that any decision to proceed in the absence of the accused would be at the discretion of the judge.

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Unlike south of the border, filming in Scottish courts is entirely up to the discretion of the trial judge.

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The judge has a lot of discretion as to how strong the order will be, including how it will go after intermediaries like credit card companies, search engines and advertisers.

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Yet as a constitutional monarch, ruling with the tacit consent of the majority, she is not the only judge of the trade-off between necessary display and indispensable discretion.

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Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis Terry Lewis indicated his view that the secretary of state has discretion to accept amended returns after the certification deadline.

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On Tuesday, Mr Clarke told MPs mandatory sentencing was "rather an American thing" and to have a situation in which, for example, a 13 was automatically imprisoned without a judge being able to use his discretion would "rather go against how we normally approach the sentencing of juveniles".

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