David Burrows considers family proceedings & the “open justice principle”
Recently Roberts J in the Family Division ordered that the Hohn financial proceedings be opened to publicity; a variety of family proceedings are now published where, even a year ago, this would have been unthinkable. So what is the law on publication of family cases?
Common law
At common law the position is as Lord Scarman explained in Harman v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1983] 1 AC 280, [1982] 1 All ER 532: “Justice is done in public so that it may be discussed and criticised in public. Moreover, trials will sometimes expose matters of public interest worthy of discussion other than the judicial task of doing justice between the parties in the particular case.”
Or, as Jeremy Bentham more caustically asserted: “Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself while trying under trial.”
Publication is not to be punished (Lord Scarman in Attorney General v Leveller Magazine Ltd [1979] AC 440, [1979]
