On Her Majesty’s Secret [Court] Service, or ‘Billionaire Putin crony loses right to secrecy in Britain’

by Paul M | Feb 25, 2018 | Analysis, Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

“Secrecy in the court system is a growing concern. The press has a duty to uphold the principle of open justice and act as the eyes and ears of the public in the courts. The Times will resist any attempts to erode those principles.” So concludes a front page story in...

Fact Finding hearings and criminal law

by reporting watch team | Feb 18, 2018 | Cases, FCReportingWatch

This post is about a new judgment from the Court of Appeal called : R (Children) [2018] EWCA Civ 198 (16 February 2018). It is about what approach the family court should take in deciding the background facts to a case where a crime might have been committed, and how...

Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup

by reporting watch team | Feb 5, 2018 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Transparency News

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 ITV This Morning and Daily Mail –...

Pianos and Prisons and Publication of Judgments

by reporting watch team | Feb 1, 2018 | Cases, FCReportingWatch

On 20 January the Daily Mail headline demanded : ‘Family court judge must explain why pianist jailed, says campaigner’ The campaigner was ex-MP John Hemming. The piano man was, we thought, a father whose protests on social media we had seen before, and in...

Pragmatism versus Principle

by reporting watch team | Jan 30, 2018 | Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

We wrote back in January last year about a case where Mr Justice Peter Jackson (now in the Court of Appeal) had ruled against direct contact between children raised in an ultra-orthodox (Charedi) Jewish community and their transgender father, in essence because in...

‘All is not well with child protection in North Wales’

by reporting watch team | Jan 28, 2018 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch

This observation was made by HHJ Gareth Jones in Wrexham Family Court in March 2017, in a judgment Re E [2017] EWFC 101 published in January 2018. HHJ Jones is a transparency hero – he is the only judge in Wales whose judgments regularly appear on BAILII, in...