Application for a reporting restriction order contra mundum until J’s eighteenth birthday granted. The legal framework was well established. Although there was power both to relax and to add to the “automatic restraints” contained in section 97 of the Children Act 1989 and section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960, in exercising that jurisdiction the court had to conduct the “balancing exercise” described in In re S (Identification: Restrictions on Publication) [2005] 1 AC 593 and in A Local Authority v W [2006] 1 FLR 1. Applying established principles to the facts, the local authority had made good its submissions that an order was required because the existing restraints had proved inadequate to control the placing of identifying material on the Internet; and continuing restraint was required because identifying information, damaging to J, would remain there, indefinitely and easily accessible. However, an injunction which could not otherwise be justified was not to be granted because of the manner or style in which the material was being presented on the Internet, nor to spare the blushes of those being attacked, however abusive and unjustified those attacks might be; the only justification was the necessity of protecting J's rights under article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Here there was a very powerful argument that the balance between the public interest in discussing the workings of the system and the personal privacy and welfare interests of the child was best and most proportionately struck by restraining the naming of the child while not restraining the publication of images of the child. The effect of this would be that (a) the essential vice—the identification of the child—was in large measure prevented, (b) Internet searches were most unlikely to provide any meaningful “link” in the searcher's mind with the particular child, and (c) the public debate was enabled to continue with the public having access to the footage albeit not knowing who the anonymous child was whose image was on view. That was the balance that needed to be struck in weighing J's powerful private interests against the powerful public interests under article 10 that were plainly engaged (paras 21, 23, 77, 83).

The case raised important questions about the extent to which the public should be able to read and see what disgruntled parents said when they spoke out about what they saw as deficiencies in the family justice system, particularly when their complaints were about the care system and how the court should adapt its practice to the realities of the Internet, and social media. There was a compelling need for transparency in the family justice system as a matter of both principle (see R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex p Simms [2000] 2 AC 115, 126) and pragmatism. It was vitally important that justice be administered in public—or at least in a manner which enabled its workings to be properly scrutinised—so that the judges and other participants in the process remained visible and amenable to comment and criticism. That principle was protected by both article 6 and article 10 of the Convention and was of particular importance in the context of care and other public law cases. Nor was it part of the function of the court to prevent the dissemination of material because it was defamatory or involved the commission of a criminal offence; in such a case the appropriate course would be an action for defamation or the commencement of criminal proceedings. The remedy was publicity for the truth which lay concealed behind the unfounded complaints, "more speech, not enforced silence" (paras 1, 31, 32, 39, 40).