The rules on when journalists can report from the family court and when they can’t ‘need to be simple, clear, coherent and accessible and they are not’, Lady Hale has said.
Giving the Sir Nicholas Wall Memorial Lecture on ‘Openness and privacy in family proceedings’, Lady Hale, President of the Supreme Court, called for more clarity on the subject of court reporting.
She questioned whether it was ‘right that the general rule is that civil courts sit in public unless…, while family courts sit in private unless…?’ Perhaps the Family Procedure Rules should be more specific about the principles governing the decision to sit in public, she said.
And while the point of publication of information is to raise public confidence, ‘can the public be confident if the judge is judge in what might be seen as his or her own cause?’
