Civil procedure

(i) Applicable principles of common law were that: (a) that a trial was conducted on the basis that each party and his lawyer, saw and heard all the evidence and all the argument seen and heard by the court; (b) a party to litigation should know the reasons why he won or lost, so that a judge’s decision would be liable to be set aside if it contained no, or even insufficient, reasons; and (c) trials should be conducted in public, and judgments should be given in public.

(ii) The principle that a litigant should be able to see and hear all the evidence which was seen and heard by a court determining his case was so fundamental, so embedded in the common law, that, in the absence of parliamentary authority, no judge should override it, at any rate in relation to an ordinary civil claim, unless (perhaps) all parties to the claim agreed otherwise. So far as the