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Open justice: an issue to address

19 September 2025 / Neil Parpworth
Issue: 8131 / Categories: Features , Human rights , Media , Public , Health & safety
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Neil Parpworth considers when the court may consider it appropriate to limit the application of the principle of open justice
  • R v Spencer concerned an independent MP who was charged with two counts of sexual assault.
  • The chief magistrate exercised their common law power to make an order withholding the defendant’s residential address from being stated in open court.
  • The Recorder of Westminster, HHJ Baumgartner, confirmed that ‘there cannot be any public interest in the defendant’s home address being aired in open court and reported publicly by the press’.

The principle of open justice is of paramount importance in ensuring that justice is administered in an impartial, fair and transparent manner. A search of the Westlaw Legal database reveals that up to 6 August 2025, there were 377 cases in which ‘open justice’ was a subject/keyword. This of itself demonstrates how often the courts have been called upon either to uphold the principle, or to accept that in the particular circumstances of the case before

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NEWS
Government plans for offender ‘restriction zones’ risk creating ‘digital cages’ that blur punishment with surveillance, warns Henrietta Ronson, partner at Corker Binning, in this week's issue of NLJ
Louise Uphill, senior associate at Moore Barlow LLP, dissects the faltering rollout of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 in this week's NLJ
Judgments are ‘worthless without enforcement’, says HHJ Karen Walden-Smith, senior circuit judge and chair of the Civil Justice Council’s enforcement working group. In this week's NLJ, she breaks down the CJC’s April 2025 report, which identified systemic flaws and proposed 39 reforms, from modernising procedures to protecting vulnerable debtors
Writing in NLJ this week, Katherine Harding and Charlotte Finley of Penningtons Manches Cooper examine Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26, the Supreme Court ruling that narrowed what counts as matrimonial property, and its potential impact upon claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975
In this week's NLJ, Dr Jon Robins, editor of The Justice Gap and lecturer at Brighton University, reports on a campaign to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler. 60 years after her perjury conviction, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt has petitioned the king to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, arguing she was a victim of violence and moral hypocrisy, not deceit. Supported by Felicity Gerry KC, the dossier brands the conviction 'the ultimate in slut-shaming'
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