Canadian Judges Trying to Figure Out What To Do About Twitter in the Courtroom

The most recent issue of The Lawyers Weekly reports that Canadian judges are trying to figure out what to do about the use of social media such as Twitter in the courtroom:

"In behind-the-scenes debates, Canada’s judges are trying to devise a consistent and principled approach to media tweeting and other social media use within their courtrooms (...)"

"The judiciary’s internal debate about tweeting came to light after Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin warned, in a Jan. 31 speech to Carleton University, that live dissemination of court proceedings by Twitter and other social media can pose a risk to fair, accurate and complete court coverage 'and its correlative - continued public confidence in the judicial system'. "

"Despite this risk, so far few Canadian courts have devised guiding principles - let alone specific rules -for in-court social media use by journalists and other spectators."

"The result has been that individual judges have had to contend on their own with the growing number of media requests to 'tweet' live from the courtroom, especially in high-profile trials."

"The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC), which oversees federal judges, has been wrestling for more than a year with this thorny issue, but has yet to produce guidelines or best practices to help courts across the country craft their own policies."