Posts
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: February-March 2025
Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news. MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc The BBC reported on The...
Access to Family Court documents under the open justice principle
Journalists and legal bloggers (reporters) are normally allowed to see certain types of documents under the Reporting Provisions that came in this year, and earlier during the Reporting Pilot. Sometimes reporters ask to see other relevant documents, and there’s a...
Court of Appeal to decide on ‘necessity’ for intermediaries
We wrote last year about a hearing I attended in Cardiff Family Court about the necessity for an intermediary to assist a father in a fact-finding hearing. We were therefore interested to see recently listed an appeal against a decision made by a judge in a different...
Does a reporter have to be in court to read confidential documents?
Dale Vince, described on Wikipedia as ‘a British Green energy industrialist, former New Age traveller’ attracts a good deal of publicity whether it’s his political donations, owning a ‘green’ football team, or taking libel actions against publishers who wrongly...
The Transparency and Open Justice Board – consultation on key objectives
In April last year, the Lady Chief Justice set up a new Transparency and Open Justice Board, chaired by Mr Justice Nicklin. It aims to lead and coordinate the promotion of transparency and open justice across the courts and tribunals of England & Wales and support...
Guidance on citation of judgments as ‘authorities’
Not all judgments are created equal Some, by more senior judges or courts (essentially High Court judges or above), may be regarded as primary or binding ‘authority’ for the propositions of law which they contain. They lay down the law, which lesser courts and judges...
ASSISTED DYING : WHAT ROLE FOR THE TRIBUNAL? THOUGHTS ON THE LATEST PROPOSALS
This is a guest post by Sir James Munby, and it follows on from earlier posts about the proposed Assisted Dying reforms here, here and here. In Assisted Dying: What Role for the Judge? More Thoughts, published on the Transparency Project website on 6 December 2024,...
Re XY Twins – another family court judgment names an individual to warn parents
Last week, we wrote on a family court judgment about children that had been published on TNA and BAILII naming an individual party, which we said almost never happened. That’s because of the strict privacy and anonymity rules intended to protect children who are...
Judgment published to warn women against sperm donor who has “180 kids”
A family court judgment published on BAILII and TNA last month exposed prolonged harassment of the parents of a small child who had been conceived by sperm donation - by a man they'd met on social media who they thought had unselfishly offered to help them start their...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: January 2025
Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on the previous month's media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other recent transparency news. MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY...