St Andrews’ Rector is reinstated (again)

Having removed her “after she refused to follow its governance rules,” the Court has announced that Stella Maris is to reassume her role as President of the governing body on the basis of a written undertaking that she accepts she is bound by collective responsibility.

The problem? Both sides are claiming a win. The university says the appeal vindicated its decision, that the dismissal was competent, and that Maris has now formally accepted, in writing, the collective responsibility she had previously refused to be bound by. Maris says the opposite – that the appeal, heard by Lord Keen after the death of the university’s chancellor, Menzies Campbell, established that the university’s interpretation of collective responsibility was wrong.

Maris argues that the appeal result clears her of breaching governance rules, and makes clear that her rejoining Court does not require the silencing of disagreement with a decision, which had apparently been demanded – a refusal to accept it forming part of the justification for the January dismissal.

The legal and governance questions underneath have implications well beyond St Andrews – and they’re worth unpicking.

The story so far

Maris was elected as rector at St Andrews in November 2023. The following month she sent a message to all students calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, describing Israel’s actions as a “genocide”.

The university was “utterly dismayed” – and after an independent investigation by Morag Ross KC, which found that Maris’s social media activity in the aftermath breached her obligations as a Court member but that dismissal would be disproportionate, Court resolved to discharge Maris from her roles as president and trustee.

Maris appealed to the then Chancellor, Lord (Menzies) Campbell of Pittenweem, who quashed the decision – ruling that the bar for removal had not been met, and that however aggravating the Rector’s conduct may have been, it did not amount to the kind of sustained impropriety that would justify interference with the role.

That left Maris back on Court – but with underlying tensions over her and her role unresolved.

Round two

In January 2026, the university announced it had removed Maris again. This time the grounds were different.

Rather than the Gaza statement, the case was framed as a governance dispute – Maris had apparently refused to accept a longstanding protocol under which the Senior Lay Member chairs substantive Court business while the Rector opens and closes meetings.

According to the university, Maris had claimed sole authority to chair Court, disrupted a key meeting in October 2025, accused Court of acting unlawfully, refused mediation, refused to submit proposals for reform of the protocol, and declined to be bound by collective responsibility in respect of Court decisions.

The university’s position is that none of this is about silencing dissent – it’s about whether a single Court member can unilaterally override an arrangement that the rest of Court regards as necessary to comply with the 2016 Act. From the university’s perspective, Maris wasn’t removed for disagreeing with the protocol – she was removed for refusing to operate within it while the disagreement played out.

Maris contests much of this – not least claims of mediation refusal – and has raised a series of procedural complaints about the removal process. But she also argues that the Court can’t override her decisions on chairing, and that there are other ways to comply with the 2016 Act.

The fudge

To understand what’s really going on, we have to go back to the debate over the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016.

Scotland’s ancient universities have had elected rectors since the nineteenth century – the Universities (Scotland) Acts of 1858 and 1889 provide that the rector “shall be the ordinary president” of the University Court and “shall preside at meetings.” The idea was that students, as the main interest group, should get to elect the person who leads the governing body.

Over time that created problems. Rectors were sometimes outspoken, sometimes absent, sometimes both. Repeated attempts were made to abolish the role or strip it of its chairing function – in the 1950s, 1960s, 1989 (prompted by the election of Winnie Mandela at Glasgow), 1992, 1997 and 2003. Each time the proposal was seen off.

The 2016 Act tried to square the circle. It created the position of Senior Lay Member with “responsibility for the leadership and effectiveness of the governing body” in all Scottish universities – but it did not amend the 1858 and 1889 Acts for the ancients. The rector’s statutory right to preside was left intact.

At Stage 1 of the debate in Holyrood, Angela Constance (then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning) was explicit:

I emphasise that the Government is not altering rectors’ existing statutory rights. Rectors have the right to chair court, should they choose to exercise it. As things stand, it is up to the ancient universities how they dovetail the role of senior governor, who will now be elected, with that of an elected rector.

The result was a fudge. At St Andrews and the other ancients, the assumed working arrangement had been that the rector would open and close meetings while the Senior Lay Member chaired substantive business. This was set out in a protocol, reflected in the Court handbook – and crucially, it was described in previous years’ accounts as operating “with the full consent of the Rector.” Candidates for the role were required to sign a declaration agreeing to abide by it.

So the university says collective responsibility requires Maris to accept and comply with Court’s decision on the chairing protocol. Maris says she can’t accept a decision she believes is ultra vires – beyond Court’s powers – because the protocol purports to permanently override the rector’s statutory right to preside. The university says that refusal is itself a breach of collective responsibility, justifying her removal. Maris argues that if the decision is ultra vires, collective responsibility doesn’t apply to it – trustees can’t have collective responsibility for an unlawful act.

But the university would say it the other way round – until the protocol is actually found to be ultra vires by a court, it’s a lawful decision of Court, and collective responsibility applies to it like any other. Unilateral non-compliance is not the proper route to challenge it.

It’s all pretty circular, and the problem is that nobody has actually determined which it is. For the university, it has to comply with the 2016 Act’s requirement that the Senior Lay Member has responsibility for leadership and effectiveness – and it can’t do that if a rector can unilaterally withdraw consent to the protocol that makes compliance possible. For Maris, the university is using collective responsibility to prevent the challenge that would establish whether collective responsibility applies.

Keen’s decision

Maris appealed to Lord Keen of Elie KC – the Chancellorship being vacant following the death of Lord Campbell.

Keen found that the January dismissal was competent and that the protocol is consistent with statute. But rather than simply upholding the decision, he offered Maris a way back – sign an unqualified undertaking to accept collective responsibility and comply with the October 2025 motion, and he would quash the dismissal. If she refused, it would stand.

Maris’s legal team argue that collective responsibility means complying with Court decisions, not being permanently silenced about disagreement with them. It points out that Keen has confirmed that the undertaking does not require her to abjure her disagreement or give up her right to legal challenge. On that basis, she signed – and has been reinstated.

What Keen did not do is rule on the consent question. On the question of whether the Court can impose the chairing protocol regardless of the rector’s agreement, the determination is silent. His decision determines the terms of her return to Court – not the underlying constitutional relationship between the 1858/1889 Acts and the 2016 Act.

That leaves the fundamental issue unresolved. Maris has said she will, for now, “invite” the Senior Lay Member to chair the relevant parts of Court meetings – a formulation that preserves her argument that it is the rector’s authority being delegated, not the Court’s authority being imposed, while making clear she regards the concession as hers to give.

For the university, that formulation may be precisely the problem – an invitation can be withdrawn, and the dispute is therefore partly about whether the arrangement depends on the rector’s ongoing consent or stands as a decision of Court in its own right.

What next

In practical terms, the status quo survives – the Senior Lay Member will continue to chair substantive business. But the university hasn’t won the definitive ruling it was seeking, and Maris hasn’t given up on the argument that the whole arrangement is either unlawful in general, or at least requires her consent.

A spokesperson for University Court said:

We are very pleased that the Court’s decision has been vindicated and that Ms Maris has given a formal undertaking that she accepts and will comply with Court’s decision and accepts collective responsibility.

Lawyer Sam Fowles – representing Maris – said:

Lord Keen’s decision establishes that the court was wrong to adopt such an authoritarian stance and that dissent must be permitted. As a graduate of St Andrews and a former member of the court, this case was close to my heart. I regularly disagreed with the court’s decisions, in public and private, without ever being treated in the manner that Stella has been.

Lord Keen KC quashed the Court’s decision. In eight years at the bar, I have yet to see a decision which is ‘correct be quashed.

Maris, writing on LinkedIn, said:

The University argued that the principle of “collective responsibility” required silence. My position was that it requires compliance with decisions, but cannot operate as a perpetual gag on disagreement.

More broadly, this moment should remind us of something fundamental about the purpose of universities and the communities they serve. We must foster an environment where those who speak out against atrocities, genocide, illegal wars and abuses of power are not punished for doing so.

In her letter to the Court, Maris has also raised other allegations about procedure, which include her claims of discrimination, and that her dismissal came when she was still seeking legal advice. Scottish Legal News also reports that she is still suing the university for alleged discrimination.

The deeper issue is one that the Scottish Parliament left hanging in 2016. If a rector’s statutory right to preside is to be reconciled with a Senior Lay Member’s responsibility for leadership and effectiveness, the mechanism for doing so needs to be clear – and it needs to be able to cope with a rector who doesn’t like the particular flavour of fudge in a protocol.

Right now it can’t, and the result seems to be a cycle of removal, appeal, reinstatement and unresolved tension that serves nobody – least of all the students whose interests the role was created to protect back in 1858.

The author has been following this case since the events described in 2024, when he spoke informally to Stella Maris about the case at its early stages. He has had no subsequent direct personal involvement with the case or the individuals discussed here.