Blog
Justice system data in 2022: New year reflections and resolutions
What’s the collective noun for browser tabs? I ended my year with a lot – a flock? A bevy? – open, mainly relating to one of my main preoccupations, justice system data (i.e. information generated by the process of justice). I’m somewhat nervously returning to them...
Remote hearings: the HMCTS evaluation
Last month HM Courts and Tribunals Service published their own research into user experiences of remote hearings: Evaluation of remote hearings during the COVID 19 pandemic. The report analyses responses to surveys conducted between May and October 2020 with public...
A curious headline: “Senior judges voice alarm after private deal in oligarch divorce”
We saw this headline in The Times just after Christmas. What on earth is it all about? We've read and re-read it and to be frank, we're still not completely sure. The 'oligarch divorce' in question is that of Farkhad Akhmedov and his ex wife Tatiana Akhmedova, which...
The Equal Treatment Bench Book – guidance on fairness for judges
We've just noticed that a revised version of this lengthy document (566 pages!) has been issued online, so we looked for any references to transparency. What we found is brief and out of date. The preface by Lady Justice King explains that the book is a 'living...
Authorities seeking to silence families?
On 24 November, the BBC broadcast the story above. The Court of Protection (CoP) judgment, PH & Anor v Brighton And Hove City Council [2021] EWCOP 63, has now been published on BAILII. The full name of the case is: PH and RH v (1) Brighton and Hove City Council...
Griffiths v Tickle – a lawyer’s view
This post originally appeared on the author's blog Pink Tape and is reposted here with permission (NB, disclosure : the author is the Chair of The Transparency Project). Most of the newspapers carried the story on Saturday: 'Andrew Griffiths found to have raped his...
Membership of the Transparency Implementation Group announced
Today, the Ministry of Justice has announced the makeup of the TIG - the Transparency Implementation Group who will take forward the recommendations made in the President’s Review published at the end of October, that we wrote about here. The group is appropriately...
Speaking out in the public interest and children’s privacy rights? The Eleanor Bradford adoption breakdown saga
Media stories this week of an adoption breakdown, from the perspective of an adoptive mother who felt she had no option but to ask for her older child (15) to return to care, have provoked lots of comment, some of it scathing. We’ve gathered the reports and broadcasts...
‘Far too often survivors and their children have been let down and retraumatised through the process and it is one of my utmost priorities to change this’
This is a quote from the website of the UK Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, on the release of ‘Improving the family court response to domestic abuse’, a 29-page report on her work to date on establishing a mechanism to monitor the way allegations of...
Open Justice Inquiry – Read the written evidence
The Justice Committee is currently conducting an inquiry : Open justice: court reporting in the digital age The inquiry is not specific to family justice but it does encompass issues of relevance to the Family Court - so we made written submissions. One of our core...