Category: open justice
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First ever ‘Family Court Reporting Week’ is launched by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
To encourage more reporting on the life-changing decisions that take place in family courts, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) will run a series of events, mentoring and practical “at-court” support for journalists around the country as part of its first Family Court Reporting Week, running for five days from Monday…
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Justice system reporting recognised with the Paul Foot Award
An investigation into “conveyor belt justice” by Tristan Kirk, courts reporter for The Standard, has won the 2024 Paul Foot Awards. This is an annual prize for investigative journalist set up by Private Eye in memory of its reporter, the late Paul Foot who died twenty years ago. As Courts and…
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Transform Justice: Public access to courts is essential for justice
Author: Transform Justice / CourtWatch London In the past few months, someone who wanted to watch a trial has been ejected from the court, a duty solicitor has allegedly been assaulted by security staff and a lawyer has complained of a security search in which she had her leg felt…
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Transparency & Open Justice Board announced
Giving the keynote speech at the Society of Editors 25th anniversary conference on 30 April 2024 the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-On-The-Hill, announced the establishment of a new Transparency and Open Justice Board, to be chaired by Mr Justice Nicklin. She said: “8. Its aim is to examine and modernise our approach to…
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Open Letter on HMCTS guidance: LCJ responds
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill has responded to our recent open letter pointing out a worrying series of errors in published guidance from HM Courts & Tribunal Service on public access to court hearings and information. The Lady Chief Justice acknowledged that the HMCTS advice wrongly suggested that laptops could…
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Anonymisation of civil judgments: a routine failure to follow open justice rules
Open justice includes a presumption that parties to litigation conducted in public should be named, though there are circumstances where that presumption may be displaced. But any such derogation should be justified and explained. In civil cases an order should be made, after weighing the pros and cons, and reasons…
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Open Letter to the LCJ: HMCTS guidance on public access to courts
Dear Lady Chief Justice, We write on behalf of the Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network, a UK-based initiative focused on how the public can be supported to observe courts and access court information in digital and physical environments, to express our concerns about a guidance document (“the Guide”) entitled “How…
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Fine words – but new HMCTS public guidance falls short
HMCTS recently launched a document entitled “How you can attend or access courts or tribunals — a guide for members of the public”. It is not clear whether this is intended to be the “Charter summarising the existing rules that facilitate public access to court and tribunal hearings and information”…
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Open Justice Today – speech by the Lord Chief Justice
In his recent speech, the outgoing Lord Chief Justice for England & Wales described how “sunlight is the best disinfectant” but was his perspective on open justice rather rosier than reality? Paul Magrath assesses the evidence. In one of his last speeches before retiring as the head of the judiciary…
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New reports on access to justice system data
The fortnight has brought, like buses, two new reports relating to justice system data access. First, an update from network member and advisor Paul Magrath, on the publication of listed judgments by the National Archives Find Case Law service, in the final report of ICLR’s research: The National Archives launched…
Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network 