Posts
The debate about Family Court features on PMQs and daytime telly
This week the debate about Family Courts, their secrecy, their failures (as many would see it) dealing appropriately with the tricky issue of domestic abuse has had significant public attention. The letter to the Justice Minister from 120 MPs calling for an inquiry...
An Inquiry into the Secret Family Courts?
The launch of a campaign Today sees a coordinated media push in support of a public inquiry into the secret family courts and their handling of abuse. The campaign has been brewing for many months, if not years – but today brings the announcement that 120 MPs have...
A Major Transparency Announcement from the Top Family Judge
Yesterday, the President of the Family Division published his anticipated guidance and consultation on transparency issues. The guidance had been promised by the President in the course of Transparency Project member Louise Tickle's successful appeal against a...
Adele: Privacy, Litigation and Arbitration
This is a guest post by Alex Chandler. Alex is a barrister specialising in financial remedy claims on divorce. He practises at 1 King’s Bench Walk, Temple, and also sits as a part-time judge, arbitrator and private FDR judge. His reported cases include a recent...
The Troubling case of Justyna
This is a guest post from Valerie Eliot Smith. Valerie is a non-practising barrister and Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. She has lived with the illness myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) since 1981. When health...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court casesExplaining or commenting on published judgments of family court casesHighlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES Local news Derbyshire Live and Nottinghamshire...
Pause for thought
My name is Annie, and I'm one half of the Project Coordination team at The Transparency Project. Some of you may also know me as the founder of "Surviving Safeguarding; a parent's guide to the child protection process" as well as being the Parent and Relatives...
Written evidence to Commons Justice Committee’s Court and Tribunal Reforms inquiry
In January 2019 the House of Commons Justice Select Committee launched an inquiry into the HMCTS Reform programme "to consider the progress made with the reforms so far and the implications of planned changes, particularly in relation to access to justice." As...
Alienating behaviours and appealing about an expert report
This post is about a High Court case called Re MFS (Appeal: Transfer of Primary Care) [2019] EWHC 768 (Fam), a judgment delivered in March by Mr Justice Williams. We wrote this post some weeks ago, but the judgment was removed from BAILII before we published, so we...
Privacy and anonymity orders in civil litigation
Following an earlier consultation, Part 39 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) (relating to hearings in civil courts*) has been amended in some significant ways. First, to bolster the open justice principle, it has tightened up the rules relating to when a hearing may...