Court Transparency: Live-Streaming Of Court Of Appeal Cases
Reasons to choose Wilson Browne
For a number of years HMTCS has been moving towards making the workings of the Court more transparent by allowing the access of video cameras into the Courtroom.
Only certain hearings in certain Court are currently filmed and broadcast publicly.
When an appeal is made on a case in the Family Court it will often be dealt with by the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. Since 2019 the Court of Appeal have broadcast selected appeal hearings across all areas of law. These will be selected by the Court when it is felt that there is a particularly interesting point of law to be tested, or the outcome of the hearing is considered to be of significant public interest.
The Court of Appeal is also operating a scheme to allow access to some select papers from the hearing to allow those viewing to follow along. These will typically include a copy of the judgement of the lower Court which is being challenged, and the skeleton arguments of the parties to the appeal. The documents will be suitably redacted of sensitive information.
Reporting restrictions will be dealt with at the start of any hearing, and the rules which are set about what can be reported about the hearing apply to anyone viewing the broadcast (whether or not they are a professional journalist).
In the context of proceedings relating to children, there will be restrictions on the reporting of information which may identify the child. This will include the name of the child, their parents and any other person whose identity may lead to the identification of the child. It will also include details about which could be used to identify where the child lives, such as school details.
The broadcasts take place with a time delay to allow them to be stopped should restricted information be inadvertently shared during the hearing.
The broadcasts take place on YouTube channels operated by HMCTS, and have a real-time text transcript generated alongside them. The broadcasts are also archived on the YouTube channel to allow them to be viewed at a later date.
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