header-logo header-logo

Threats and intimidation in and out of court

07 July 2025
Categories: Legal News , In Court , Profession
printer mail-detail
Judges are facing attacks, threats and abuse for doing their jobs, Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, has warned

Giving her Mansion House speech last week, Baroness Carr said: ‘Judges across many courts and tribunals have been subject to increasing and increasingly unacceptable sensationalist and inaccurate abuse.

‘They—and sometimes their families—have been subject to grave threats and intimidation both inside and outside the courtroom, both online and in the physical world.’

The Lady Chief Justice said judicial security training was helping but more needed to be done about attacks both on individual judges and on the democratic process.

Family judges, in particular, are vulnerable to threats from enraged litigants. Last year, a man was imprisoned for attacking Judge Patrick Perusko, a family court judge, in Milton Keynes County Court. In 2019, a man was imprisoned and given a five-year restraining order at Bristol Crown Court for stalking and harassing family judge Alison Raeside.

Categories: Legal News , In Court , Profession
printer mail-details

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Myers & Co—Jen Goodwin

Myers & Co—Jen Goodwin

Head of corporate promoted to director

Boies Schiller Flexner—Lindsay Reimschussel

Boies Schiller Flexner—Lindsay Reimschussel

Firm strengthens international arbitration team with key London hire

Corker Binning—Priya Dave

Corker Binning—Priya Dave

FCA contentious financial regulation lawyer joins the team as of counsel

NEWS
Social media giants should face tortious liability for the psychological harms their platforms inflict, argues Harry Lambert of Outer Temple Chambers in this week’s NLJ
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024—once heralded as a breakthrough—has instead plunged leaseholders into confusion, warns Shabnam Ali-Khan of Russell-Cooke in this week’s NLJ
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has now confirmed that offering a disabled employee a trial period in an alternative role can itself be a 'reasonable adjustment' under the Equality Act 2010: in this week's NLJ, Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve analyses the evolving case law
Caroline Shea KC and Richard Miller of Falcon Chambers examine the growing judicial focus on 'cynical breach' in restrictive covenant cases, in this week's issue of NLJ
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
back-to-top-scroll