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Law Reporting and Public Access in the Courts: Is Too Much a Good Thing?

Part 1: The English Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2020

Paul Magrath
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Abstract

This article by Paul Magrath considers the role of law reporting not only as a service in support of the administration of justice and legal education, but also in the wider context of open justice, transparency and public legal information. It traces the history of law reporting and considers the pros and cons of the more comprehensive publication of judgments of the senior courts made possible by digitisation and the internet, in comparison with the more selective approach adopted in the past. The article is loosely based on a presentation given at the annual conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians held in Bournemouth in June 2019.

Keywords

public accesslaw reportinglegal historyEnglish law
Type
Selection of papers from the BIALL Conference 2019
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 224 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians

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References

Footnotes

1 The English Legal System, 14th ed (2013-2014), p 121, para 3.6.2.

2 Foreword to Adler & Perry, Clarity for Lawyers (The Law Society, 2017).

3 I'm grateful to Guy Holborn, former Librarian of Lincoln's Inn, for this anecdote, which he discusses more fully in his essay in the volume compiled to mark ICLR's 150th anniversary in 2015: see ‘The Old Law Reporters’ in Magrath (ed), The Law Reports 1865-2015 Anniversary Edition (ICLR, 2015)

4 See, for example, ‘Publishing the courts: Judgments and public information on the Internet – Lord Justice Brooke’ (2003), from National Archives collection of judicial speeches, reproduced via ICLR at https://www.iclr.co.uk/blog/archive/publishing-the-courts-judgments-and-public-information-on-the-internet-lord-justice-brooke-2003/ (accessed 11 September 2019).

5 See Practice Direction (Judgments: Form and Citation) [2001] 1 WLR 194 and Practice Direction (Judgments: Neutral Citations) [2002] 1 WLR 346.

6 See ‘ICLR links up with BAILII’ (2012) via ICLR https://www.iclr.co.uk/blog/archive/iclr-links-up-with-bailii/ (accessed 11 September 2019).

7 https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-121120.pdf (accessed 11 September 2019).

8 The Cairncross Review: a sustainable future for journalism (February 2019) available online via Gov.uk https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779882/021919_DCMS_Cairncross_Review_.pdf (accessed 13 September 2019).

9 See, for example, Judith Townend, Could Cairncross help public interest law reporting? Via The Justice Gap https://www.thejusticegap.com/could-the-cairncross-recommendations-help-public-interest-law-reporting/ (accessed 13 September 2019) and the comments by Mark Hanna in ‘A Byline Festival conversation about Truth, Trust and Transparency in the Courts’ via Transparency Project http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/a-byline-festival-conversation-about-truth-trust-and-transparency-in-the-courts/ (accessed 13 September 2019).

10 The promotion of public awareness of the work of the family courts, whose cases are mainly heard in private, was a major impetus behind the transparency agenda pursued by Sir James Munby as President of the Family Division: see Practice Guidance: Transparency in the Family Courts: Publication of Judgments [2014] EWHC B3 (Fam); [2014] 1 WLR 230.