There has long been a tension between the principles of open justice and the desire of parties litigating sensitive matters to keep their identity, parts of the litigation, or even the fact of the litigation itself, private. The default position for almost all civil litigation is that (i) parties are named in proceedings, (ii) non-parties (i.e. members of the public) can obtain copies of core documents from the court, and (iii) hearings are conducted in ‘open’ court (i.e. the public may observe). Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Anonymisation
The Transparency Project noticed two cases in which judgments were published on 11 May 2020 the very day that the President’s Transparency Review call for evidence closed – each deals with the question of whether a local authority who had brought care proceedings should be named, and each considers the 2018 guidance on anonymisation (which is one of the subjects of the President’s Transparency Review). Continue reading
On 7 December 2018, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the President of the Family Division [pic], issued some practice guidance to judges entitled Practice Guidance: anonymisation and avoidance of the identification of children and the treatment of explicit descriptions of the sexual abuse of children in judgments intended for the public arena (see January [2019] Fam Law 68). Continue reading
The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew MacFarlane recently issued some guidance on the anonymisation of published judgments in family court cases. You can read that guidance here. Continue reading
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