As the courts juggle the principles of open justice & confidentiality, a piecemeal approach to privacy has emerged: Ian Gascoigne asks whether a simpler, more predictable system is overdue
- This article explores how English civil courts increasingly navigate between the principles of open justice and the need to protect privacy, secrecy, or confidentiality—especially in national security and commercial contexts.
- It identifies five informal categories of privacy in court proceedings, ranging from fully public hearings to entirely secret ones, illustrating how the system has evolved piecemeal rather than by design.
‘Publicity is the very soul of justice’. So said Lord Shaw of Dunfermline in the House of Lords, citing Jeremy Bentham, more than 110 years ago in Scott v Scott [1913] AC 417.
In July this year, a court’s judgment was published in which a ‘super injunction’ obtained by the government acting through the Ministry of Defence on 1 September 2023 was set aside (Ministry of Defence v Global Media and Entertainment Ltd [2025] EWHC 1806 (Admin)). One of
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