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Courting controversy

15 February 2013 / Roger Smith
Issue: 7548 / Categories: Opinion , Human rights
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Roger Smith considers courts & constitutions

Someone in the UK Supreme Court has a talent for communication. To the court’s existing Twitter feed and live streaming of hearings, we now have the promise of a regular presence on YouTube. The court has committed itself to five minute summaries of its court judgments. These are written and delivered by one of the justices and have been given, but not regularly broadcast, since the court was established in 2009. The summaries are designed to pick out the key facts and findings without the legal analysis present either in the judgment itself or the written press summaries.

The YouTube performances are hardly dramatic but they are rather good in providing accessible versions of the judgments. They underline how the court has gone beyond its predecessor, the appellate committee of the House of Lords. In a recent speech, Lord Carnwath reflected: “I believe there has been a profound change…over time [the Supreme Court] has brought a new sense of collective identity.” He quoted earlier words of Lord Hope: “The most

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NEWS
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
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