The Open Justice UK group has been refused permission to live tweet a case in Scotland, as Cristiana Theodoli (@_cric) explains here. While journalists have applied to tweet and tweeting was allowed during sentencing in the Tommy Sheridan trial last year, not one journalist has gained authorisation to live tweet a full trial, according to Theodoli (specific permission is required for journalists, unlike England & Wales).

Open Justice UK liaised with the Scottish court ahead of the selected trial but:

“Today, just a day or two before the trial is due to start, we received a short email stating that the Judge has a number of concerns that he feels should be taken up at a senior level and the timescale would not allow for it.”

Meanwhile, at a High Court (Chancery division) hearing in London last Thursday (23 February) the Guardian secured access to court documents relating to News International and Glenn Mulcaire.

In an approved judgment released on Monday (27 February), Mr Justice Vos set out the reasons he has allowed the Guardian (“and any other media organisations that request them”) to access redacted documents, including the “generic Particulars of Claim”, “the Notice to Admit” and the “Response”, mentioned at the phone hacking pre-trial review on 19 January 2012. No parties objected to the Guardian’s request to access a fourth document, the “generic list of issues”.

I’ve flagged up a few key parts below.

Mr Mulcaire’s counsel were concerned

“…that reporting of some parts of the 3 documents will create a substantial risk that the course of justice in the further criminal proceedings that Mr Mulcaire may face will be seriously impeded or prejudiced.” [3]

Vos J found:

“There is a distinct and crucial public interest in scrutinising the decision-making process in this case, and in knowing the facts on which the decisions are being made.” [80]

He said:

“it seems to me to be entirely legitimate for GNM and other media organisations to wish to see unredacted copies of the core documents on the basis of which these proceedings have been and are being conducted.” [81]

…

“First, so far as can be judged today, reporting of the parts of the 3 documents that Mr Mulcaire wishes to see redacted would not, with the one exception already mentioned, give rise to a ‘not insubstantial’ risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in Mr Mulcaire’s future trial (if there is one)”… [82]

He concluded that GNM should be provided with unredacted copies of the three documents, save for several stipulated redactions detailed in par 87 (reasons discussed in the judgment).

The judgment discusses the application of the CPR Part 5.4C(2) and the “Open justice availability of documents to non-parties” (CPR Part 5.4C.10).

You can read the judgment in full, below:

HT: @adamwagner1 for alerting me to the published judgment.

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!

How will your partnership with the Guardian work?

We are having ongoing discussion with Guardian Law, the plan is for Guardian journalists, including those not used to covering courts, to go out and report on cases. The Guardian has also agreed to publish some of the best output coming from our writers and pushing the social media aspect south of the border.

Is it a country-wide initiative, or just Scotland based?

Our intention is to make it as wide as possible, at the moment we have started with Scotland as it is where we are based and have contacts, but in the next couple of weeks we plan to roll out the initiative and engage those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland too.

How do you see the project developing after ‘open justice week’?

At the moment we are focusing on making the week itself as successful as possible, we are open to suggestions as to how to take the project forward at the end of the week.

Their ‘Open Justice UK‘ project, which will go live on Monday 27 February, aims “to get writers, legal professionals and members of the public to collaborate using social media to share their experiences of a week in the life of the legal system”.

Our goal is to publish accounts from all levels of justice, from the lowest courts to the highest, inviting lawyers, journalists, members of the public and offenders to write, blog and tweet about what really goes on in our courts.

Guardian Law supported the project in an editorial yesterday,

The project is not without difficulties. Participants need training in how to avoid contempt of court, which some lawyers have offered to provide. Some Scottish courts lack a phone signal, let alone decent Wi-Fi. Judges may have reservations. Professional court reporters know that their job demands skill and care. But peering into the workings of the justice system is a necessary task, and we wish the project every success.

Open Justice UK is on Twitter @oj_UK and has a Facebook group here. It strikes me as a really useful exercise and I look forward to participating/following.

As the Guardian says, there will be difficulties ahead for the digital court reporter. While excited about the future for ‘digital open justice’, I’m also keenly aware of the ethical and legal dilemmas it brings.

For example, is it always appropriate to allow live-tweeting in court? If so, should more guidance and resources be made available to both journalists and the general public? I shared the discomfort of some tweeters about live tweets from the Gary Speed inquest and reflected on whether they met the PCC’s criteria for reporting inquests. The tweets I saw did not seem to divulge any more detail than the subsequent press reports but nonetheless, I felt myself agreeing with the Mirror’s Jim Shelley who said: “Who amongst us really needs ‘live updates’ from #garyspeedinquest?”

From a legal perspective, contempt of court poses the biggest challenge: last week tweeting was banned in the Harry Redknapp trial at Southwark Crown Court, after a journalist tweeted the name of a juror and about evidence given by a witness under oath in the absence of the jury – the matter has now been referred to the Attorney General, according to Legal Week.

‘Open Justice Week’ could provide a good platform to discuss these and other issues, as well as an opportunity to come up with new ideas and strategies for the development of digital open justice.

Our coincidentally but aptly timed Justice Wide Open event at City University is now fully booked, but you can join the waiting list here.

It will feature a specific session on court reporting (with Heather Brooke, journalist and activist; Mr Mike Dodd, editor of PA Media Lawyer; Adam Wagner, barrister, One Crown Office Row and editor of the UK Human Rights Blog, William Perrin, founder, Talk About Local and member of the Crime and Justice Sector Panel on Transparency).  We’ll be tweeting and blogging the event, as well as publishing the papers later in the spring.

As a postscript, the Cabinet Office has released submissions to its Open Data Consultation here. I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet, but they include responses from the Ministry of Justice, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Creative Commons and the Open Rights Group – (and a submission by Lucy Series and me on legal data).