Posts
Press regulator upholds complaint against The Times in the Muslim Foster Carer Case
Last year The Times ran a number of leading articles criticising the arrangements for the care of a young girl placed in foster care by Tower Hamlets council, with a focus on the religious background and practices of the foster carer and their ability to speak...
Journalism, Judges and Justice – a crisis in court reporting?
A report on Open Justice from the Chartered Institute of Journalists warns of “an unprecedented, and sustained, attack on the journalism profession, which has taken a toll on our ability to cover courts, and report on their function”. Its author is Tim Crook, Vice...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases Highlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES The Telegraph - Reported the Court of Appeal...
Three examples of how not to do family justice
This week involves a trio of disastrous cases where things have gone wrong and judges have explained why. The first case is Re L (A Child) [2017] EWHC 3707 (Fam) (22 December 2017), which opens with Mr Justice Francis saying : At some point during the night of a...
Litigant’s claim struck out for discussing case during break in giving evidence – a cautionary tale
It’s one of the cardinal rules of court procedure: once you’ve entered the witness box and started to give evidence, you mustn't discuss the case with anyone outside court, if there’s a break in the proceedings, until you’ve finished giving evidence. While the hearing...
Meal ticket for life bid backfires – or does it?
The Telegraph is one of a number of newspapers to report on the decision of the Court of Appeal to refuse the appeal of Mrs Waggott asking for an increase in her divorce award, and to allow the appeal of Mr Waggot, asking for the duration of her maintenance award to...
Quintessentially Transparent?
Family Law publishes a regular column by The Transparency Project. This blog post originally appeared in the March 2018 issue, [2018] Fam Law 333. In late January 2018 the President published his '18th View from the President's Chambers: the on-going process of reform...
The responsible use of attachment assessments for court
This is a guest post by Rebecca Carr-Hopkins and Tracy Rydin-Orwin (ICI trainers) and Andrea Landini (Director, Family ReIations Institute). They are responding to our post on the case of Re C [2018] EWFC B9, where a psychologist's evidence was based on a clinical...
Why doesn’t the family court punish professionals who break the rules?
On March 25th we considered what happened to people who refused to abide by orders made by the family courts and the powers family courts have to send them to prison in punishment. That blog post prompted comments along the lines of what happened when the...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases Highlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES BBC News - Reported a BBC 5 Live...