Jack McConnell has nominated solicitor general Elish Angiolini to be Scotland's new top law officer.

If approved by MSPs, Angiolini will become the first woman to hold the title of lord advocate, the country's chief prosecutor.

First minister McConnell wants her to replace Colin Boyd, who unexpectedly quit as lord advocate on Wednesday after six years in the job.

Announcing the nomination, the first minister said: "In Scotland's lord advocate I want to have a moderniser, someone who will help with and understand the implementation of our government's policy, but also someone who will be honest and consistent in their legal advice to cabinet and to ministers, and someone who will make independent decisions on prosecution with the integrity that the holder of this office has always had."

McConnell said Angiolini had been Scotland's first woman solicitor general, the first prosecutor to hold the position and the first solicitor to be appointed to it for hundreds of years.

"But she has met every challenge in that job and does so with excellence and with the increasing confidence of even those who may originally have had reservations about that bold judgment," he said.

"I want to continue the reform and modernisation of our courts and our justice service, I want to continue in Scotland to have an independent but increasingly more effective prosecution service."

Angiolini said: "There is still a great deal to be done to ensure that, as Nelson Mandela says, prosecutors defend the rights of the weakest and the worst amongst us.

"And that independence of approach to prosecution is something which I hope I will be able to continue."