“Unleashing the potential”

The Cabinet Office has published its white paper on open data.  Freedom of Information and Re-using Data is covered, which the Guardian summarises here on its Data Blog.

There are a few references to existing legal initiatives, including Legislation.gov.uk and a research project into anoymising reoffending data. The paper also discusses the legal and ethical framework for the release of open data more generally.

Lucy Series and I raised some issues regarding legal data in our submission to the ‘Making Open Data Real’ consultation last year. I’ll return to this issue in due course.

City University London working papers

The Centre for Law Justice and Journalism’s ‘Justice Wide Open’ working papers are now available to download from Scribd at this link. Or follow the links in this post on the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism blog.

But what about opening up justice online? The new issue of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers features my article summing up the ‘Open Justice in the Digital Era’ project at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, and the forthcoming ‘Justice Wide Open’ working papers. Appropriately, as of this month, access to the journal is free online [print subscription details here].

I argue that our project raises important questions to be teased out and properly considered by legal authorities and government, in consultation with the public, researchers and the media. In that sense, our project is a call for debate as well as action.

Read the article in full here.

“In the 21st century, open justice should be online justice,” David Banisar, Article 19. 

The Guardian has succeeded in its legal bid to gain access to court documents in extradition proceedings (listed at the end of this post).

The Guardian has been seeking access to documents used to justify the extradition of two Britons, Jeffrey Tesler and Wojciech Chodan, to the US. After they were sent to Texas, the pair pleaded guilty to taking part in a decade-long conspiracy to channel bribes worth $180m to Nigerian officials and politicians. (Guardian, 3.04.12)

In a judgment handed down today (Guardian News and Media Ltd, R (on the application of) v City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2012] EWCA Civ 420) the Master of the Rolls, Hooper LJ and Toulson LJ granted appeal of an Administrative court decision which dismissed the Guardian’s claim for judicial review, following a District Judge’s refusal of access to certain documents.

Although I disagree with the reasoning of the courts below, I recognise that this decision breaks new ground in the application of the principle of open justice, although not, as I believe, in relation to the nature of the principle itself, Toulson LJ [90].

Brid Jordan, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP, who acted for the Guardian, explains

The Court of Appeal has ruled that where documents have been placed before a judge and referred to in the course of open proceedings, the default position should be that access should be permitted on the open justice principle. Where access is sought for a proper journalistic purpose the case for allowing it will be particularly strong.

The campaigning organisation Article 19 made a submission in the case (embedded below) which the judgment praised for its “helpful and interesting survey of the approach which has been taken by courts in other common law countries“.

The Court of Appeal judgment comes a month on from the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism event, Justice Wide Open. In a comment piece for the Guardian marking today’s judgment, Article 19′s senior counsel David Banisar (left) said that the CLJJ event had

…revealed that there were many legal and practical limits to open justice. Few local newspapers now cover local courts and even the larger national media only attend a few cases; transcripts remain the commercial property of the court reporters and video and audio recording of cases is forbidden for reasons that are hard to understand; non-media such as community micro-sites have little access to anything; the FOIA only has limited application to the courts.

Crucially, Banisar flagged up that in the Guardian’s case,

…the growing practice of judges and the lawyers moving to a more document-focused case system and referring to documents that are only partially read out triggered the need to change the rules.

He argued that taking today’s decision forward, the UK should now adopt a similar approach to the US courts – one of “proactive disclosure”.

This blog post opened with the final sentence of Banisar’s piece: “In the 21st century, open justice should be online justice.” That is the central tenet of the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism’s ‘Open Justice in the Digital Age’ project, which we launched with the Justice Wide Open event on 29 February 2012. For more information please visit the project page here. A publication with contributions from the speakers at the event is forthcoming.

The Guardian sought to obtain:

1. The opening notes and skeleton arguments submitted on behalf of the US Government and the skeleton arguments submitted on behalf of the defendants.

2. Affidavits submitted by William Stuckwisch, the US senior trial attorney responsible for the conduct of the prosecutions.

3. Other affidavits or witness statements submitted by prosecutors for the US Department of Justice.

4. Correspondence between the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the US Department of Justice discussing which agency should prosecute the case.

5. Correspondence between solicitors acting for MW Kellogg and counsel for Mr Tesler on the subject of whether MW Kellogg was being prosecuted by the SFO and an accompanying witness statement from the solicitor acting for Mr Tesler, which had been handed up to the judge at the hearing on 28 January 2010.

Article 19′s submission

Update: added Brid Jordan’s comment piece, 04.04.12

Reblogged from Law, Justice and Journalism:

By PA Media Lawyer

The press needs to lift its game if the principle of open justice is to be maintained, a senior QC has warned.

Part of the rationale for open justice was that it meant that judges were themselves under trial while conducting cases, because of media and public scrutiny, and that the public was educated by reports of what was happening in the courts, said media law and human rights specialist Geoffrey Robertson.

Read more… 136 more words

Reblogged from Law, Justice and Journalism:

By PA Media Lawyer

The jury system might need to be changed to allow jurors to play a more active part in trials as a result of the advances in technology which brought the internet, micro-blogging and social websites such as Twitter and Facebook, a conference was told.

At present technological advances posed two dangers to trials in criminal cases, said Professor Ian Cram, Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Leeds (left).

Read more… 120 more words

To mark Open Justice Week, Meeja Law has finally joined Facebook (here) where you will find links and resources about digital media law. On Twitter, you can follow @meejalaw and for automated updates on media law, @medialawUK. Or I’m @jtownend.

For this week’s media law listings (courts, Leveson Inquiry, Parliament and events) please see my latest round up on the Inforrm blog.

On Wednesday 29 February, lawyers, academics, journalists and others will be gathering at City University London to discuss the way forward for open justice in 2012. Speakers at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism’s ‘Justice Wide Open’ seminar include the journalist and activist Heather Brooke, PA Media Lawyer editor Mike Dodd, Hugh Tomlinson QC and Geoffrey Robertson QC.

The programme is embedded below and more details can be found here. It’s fully booked but you can join the waiting list. If you’d like to be kept informed when the publication is released later in the Spring, please drop me an email: judith.townend.1@city.ac.uk.

Happy Open Justice Week!