As the tenth anniversary of the new Scottish Parliament approached, we believed the time was ripe to offer some assessment of the Parliament's contribution to various areas of Scots law. This volume is the result.

Of course, it is never as simple as that. First, there was the matter of selecting contributors for the individual chapters. Approaches were made to the bravest and the best from the wealth of talent found amongst Scotland's legal academics and practitioners: each was asked to pass judgment on the progress made by legislators, offering critical analysis of the Parliament's contribution in his or her field of expertise.

We would like to offer our profound thanks to the contributors who made time in their busy schedules to rise to the challenge, strove to meet our editorial guidelines and to do so timeously.

We were most gratified when the project was greeted with enthusiasm by the Edinburgh Legal Education Trust and we are indebted to the trustees and to Elspeth Reid for her insight and unfailing courtesy and efficiency in helping to steer us through the Trust's approval process in order that the volume could appear in the Edinburgh Studies in Law Series. Thereafter, the proposal was considered and accepted by Edinburgh University Press and we are grateful to Sarah Edwards, Eddie Clark and their colleagues for their assistance with editing and production.

Contributors have endeavoured to state the law as at 31 December 2009 and, on occasion, it has been possible to incorporate more recent developments.