Hershman Levy Memorial Lecture – Munby LJ on Transparency

Lord Justice Munby recently delivered the annual Hershman Levy Lecture on the topic of Transparency and the Children Schools and Families Act 2010, in which he referred to my recent article in Family Law, republished here. You can read the lecture here on the Association of Lawyers for Children website (I’ve downloaded it here: HERSHMAN_LEVY_MEMORIAL_LECTURE_2010, as [...]

Washed up and hung out to air in public

Further to my previous post on the passing of the Children Schools & Families Act 2010, The Times has published an article about the new provisions which is spot on: it identifies – importantly – that the new law, when it is brought into force, will in fact be more restrictive than the existing privacy rules covering [...]

Open Debate

The FLBA hosted a panel discussion on ‘Publicity in Family Proceedings’ today. It was moderated by Mr Justice Coleridge, and the panel was comprised of Mrs Justice Eleanor King, Anthony Hayden QC, Joshua Rozenberg and Dr Julia Brophy. It was a really interesting discussion. There was some consensus on a number of points: that greater [...]

OPENNESS OF FAMILY COURTS

Today’s press release from the MoJ in respect of proposed legislative reform to further open up the Family Courts. Hmmm….More on this when I’ve had time to look properly…

The Final Straw

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has announced the second tranche of reforms in respect of the opening up of the family courts, reports the Times. It is no surprise that the government has announced its plan to relax the law in respect of reporting restrictions after the widespread disappointment voiced by the media when it realised [...]

The Prurient Eye

This case concerning the Spencer Divorce is the second case I have seen reported where counsel have tried to argue for privacy within ancillary relief proceedings – and failed. The characteristic of both cases is that the argument was focussed on ousting the media from the hearing in the first place, rather than on restricting [...]

Writing About Family Proceedings – A Blogger’s Guide

Thinking about telling the world about the injustice you have suffered at the hands of the family court system? Understandably many parents who have been through family court proceedings want to blog or write about their experience of trying to get contact with their son or daughter, or about how the state wrongly took their children from [...]

A Model of Neutrality

At least we can be sure that the accredited media who are now permitted access to the family courts can be relied upon to report lawfully, accurately and without bias or pathos…sorry, did I snigger when I said that? What a shocking piece of journalism / creative writing. There are self-indulgent English idyll flourishes (the reporter tells us [...]

Quite (Un)interesting

So today I was not sure whether to be disappointed that no journalists were queueing outside the family proceedings court waiting to watch and report on my efforts at wading through thick soup. No, we were not quite interesting enough for them to brave the Monday morning April showers, the WRVS Coffee or the anti-sleep bench [...]

You! You at the back! PAY ATTENTION!

As reported in The Times today journalists and activists are beginning to realise that the reforms in respect of media access to family proceedings are not a green light to report anything and everything juicy, salacious or gruesome. Or really much of anything at all. Not a few people were so caught up whooping at [...]