The new issue of the Index on Censorship magazine proclaims ‘Privacy Is Dead! Long Live Privacy.’
It features Joshua Rozenberg’s interview with Mr Justice Eady.
Parts of it echo Eady’s previous speeches (for example, when he opened City University London’s Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism in 2010 – PDF link).
But Eady’s comments about the balancing act between ECHR Articles 8 and 10 are just as relevant this year, and need to be re-examined in light of the super injunction furore.
Two quotes are pasted below, but you can find the interview at this link – and it’s worth reading in full.
On ill (and over) represented media law coverage
…”I think it’s inevitable because the press are interested in the press’s own affairs. So privacy and libel get much more coverage than personal injury, commercial cases or even public law, all of which are just as important if not more important”.
‘There are lots of judgments that have been criticised where it’s quite apparent that people haven’t read them. But there’s nothing you can do about that: the press office aren’t going to give them a spoonful of sugar to make it easier. And if they want to criticise the judgment, they will – whatever it says. But I don’t really bother to read that stuff.”
On the libel-privacy overlap
…“They interlink because they’re both part of the human personality — or, as they tend to call it in Strasbourg, human integrity. So one can see why Article 8 would have them both under its umbrella – although originally, of course, it didn’t. It’s a very recent development that libel has been brought in under Article 8 – not in the convention, obviously, but in case law.”