Ian Gascoigne of LexisNexis dissects the uneasy balance between open justice and confidentiality in England’s civil courts, in this week's NLJ. From public hearings to super-injunctions, he identifies five tiers of privacy—from fully open proceedings to entirely secret ones—showing how a patchwork of exceptions has evolved without clear design
Recent examples include the Ministry of Defence’s secret super-injunction over Afghan data and cases protecting trade secrets or national security.
Gascoigne suggests that while judges uphold transparency as fundamental, expedience and commercial pressures have created inconsistency. He calls for a simpler, binary system to distinguish open and 'part-private' cases, avoiding repeated arguments over redaction and secrecy.
Greater predictability, he concludes, would protect both transparency and justice in a modern, accountable court system.
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