This is a record of a working document, from which our constitution was drawn.

  1. The Transparency Project aims to promote the transparency of Family Court proceedings in England and Wales through providing straightforward, accurate and accessible information for litigants and the wider public.
  2. The Transparency Project does not seek to promote a particular perspective on the Family Justice System but through its work aims to facilitate and engage with evidence based and properly informed public debate.
  3. The Transparency Project aims to contribute to and promote debate about Transparency and the Family Justice System by exploring non-traditional methods of stimulating informed debate and of delivering public legal information.
  4. The individual participants in the project hold different personal views about issues in these fields and the project neither adopts those views nor seeks to prohibit its members from expressing them. The participants’ shared belief is that there is a pressing public need for the provision of good quality information to be presented to the public in accessible form in order for public debate and opinion to be informed, and that the reporting of cases via the mainstream media is currently insufficient to achieve this aim fully.
  5. The Transparency Project aims in due course to involve “non-professionals” in the organisation and running of the project, once it has established itself as an organisation.
  6. The Transparency Project will identify a series of projects through which it will promote the identified goals.
  7. The Transparency Project aims to comment on judgments in cases which (a) arouse public or media attention and require to be explained or clarified to avoid misunderstanding; (b) are of interest to family law professionals; or (c) provide useful examples of how the family justice system works.