Commentary
News, analysis, comment and updates from ICLR's case law and UK legislation platform
Continuing his series discussing the impact on family law and practice of reported cases arising in other areas of law, David Burrows considers some of the implications of the drive for greater transparency in the family courts. Common law: to make sense of the proceedings Transparency of family courts is a real concern for Sir James Munby P.… Continue reading
In a series of posts on this blog, David Burrows will be discussing the impact on family law and practice of reported cases arising in other areas of law. As he explains in this introduction to the series, family law is not an isolated, self-contained jurisdiction, but forms part of the general law, with which… Continue reading
The very fact that criminal cases account for around a quarter of ICLR’s annual coverage is testament to the fact that English criminal law is in a continual state of development and adjustment in the courts. For criminal practitioners, this means continual effort must be applied to keeping track of the ever-changing rules and points… Continue reading
Today saw the opening scene of a courtroom drama that looks likely to play out over the rest of the year, if not beyond. Claims have been brought against the government in the person of the Secretary of State for Brexit with a view to obtaining a court ruling on the correct procedure for the… Continue reading
In the case of Ewing v Crown Court sitting at Cardiff and Newport [2016] EWHC 183 (Admin); [2016] WLR(D) 62 the Divisional Court confirmed an important feature of the open justice principle: that permission is not needed in order to take notes in Court. Although the Court may, for good reason, withdraw the liberty to take… Continue reading
A transcript of the Court of Appeal’s judgment in R (Miranda) v SSHD [2016] EWCA Civ 6 can be found here. [Hat tip to @RichGreenhill for nudging me that the transcript was available on BAILII]. Facts David Miranda was stopped and detained by police at Heathrow airport in August 2013 under para 2(1) of Schedule… Continue reading
Introduction to the Review The purpose of this Review is to pull together the most significant criminal cases decided in 2015 into one place and to provide a short “snippet” on each that e ncapsulates the principle of law for which they stand as authority. There are many superior alternatives to this sort of “updater”… Continue reading
English and Welsh law is made up of common law and statute law – what I shall call, together, primary law; and, of the two, statute law will always trump common law. Common law is made for the most part by judges of the High Court, Upper Tribunal, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Statute… Continue reading
The open justice principle identified in Scott v Scott [1913] AC 417 remains the default position for family proceedings. Any derogation or departure must be justified as an exception. The approach of the Family Procedure Rules (in FPR r 27.10), purporting to reverse the polarity of that presumption of open justice, ought to be regarded as ultra vires (ie not within the statutory powers of the rule makers: see Courts Act 2003 ss 75 and 76) — not to mention an affront to the whole purpose of open justice and transparency, viz accountability and the disinfecting powers of sunlight, argues David Burrows in this guest post.… Continue reading
