Posts
Is Criminal Justice Under Lockdown Remotely Possible?
Justice suspended Nothing better represents our idea of justice being not only done but seen to be done than the spectacle of trial by jury in the Crown Court. The arrangement of the physical space of the courtroom, the royal coat of arms behind the raised bench...
Transgender man loses appeal and remains recognised as ‘mother’ on child’s birth certificate
This case concerns an appeal by Alfred McConnell (previously anonymised as TT in the first instance decision). Mr McConnell was born female but around 10 years ago, at the age of 22, transitioned to become male, undergoing testosterone treatment and a double...
The magic soup stone strikes again (more new authorities about remote hearings)
Following on from our Alphabet Soup post about Re A and Re B (and our earlier post about Re P), there are two new remote hearing related judgments out : A Local Authority v Mother & Ors [2020] EWHC 1086 (Fam) and Re Q [2020] EWHC 1109 (Fam). As with A and B,...
The future of journalism: our response to the inquiry
The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee is currently holding an inquiry into the future of journalism. "This inquiry will investigate how digital technologies are changing the production and consumption of journalism, how journalists can be supported...
When Remote Justice Works
This is a guest post by Celia Kitzinger, co-director of the Coma and Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre and Honorary Professor, Cardiff University School of Law and Politics. She tweets as @KitzingerCelia During the current public health emergency,...
Alphabet Soup
Although the remote family justice soup has of late been a right old 'pea souper', with some difficult to digest lumps of guidance giving us all a tummy ache, some new letters have floated to the top of family justice broth this week. Re A and Re B are judgments from...
The Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, and a little bit of history.
Reflecting on where you have been is a useful exercise. I don’t mean that in the LinkedIn sense: I am not about to start posting pictures of hikers atop a mountain with the caption ‘INSPIRATION’, nor am I about to share how I woke up at 4am to drink a green tea carrot...
UPDATE: Z (A Child: committal proceeding) – a reminder that no one can be committed to prison without being named publicly
I wrote a piece for the blog back in March 2020 about the case of Z (A Child: committal proceeding) [2020] EWFC B5 (24 January 2020). It concerned a private children law matter where the father had tampered with a drug testing report - which would have shown that he...
Justice on the altar
A couple of weeks back, the President of the Family Division quite sensibly decided that he needed to take stock of how things were working out, now that the Family Court is conducting many hearings by remote means, whether by phone or video. To that end the Family...
Publication and correction of judgments – official and unofficial sources
Who is responsible for publishing the official approved version of judgments of the courts? Where should we look to find the latest, in some cases corrected, version of a court judgment? These are not new questions, but the sudden swerve to virtual justice has thrown...