English Law Commission Report on Contempt of Court: Court Reporting

The English Law Commission has released its report on Contempt of Court: Court Reporting.

The Commission's recommendations include:

• Ensuring that court reporting orders banning publication for the duration of proceedings are all posted on a single publicly accessible website (a similar website currently operates in Scotland)
• Including a further restricted service where, for a charge, registered users could find out the detail of the reporting restriction and could sign up for automated email alerts of new orders
• Where there are reporting restrictions in place relating to the names of parties to the proceedings (including those whose purpose is to protect other individuals who might be identified if the names of the parties were known) the online list will identify cases by number, with a suitably anonymised case name, as is currently the practice with public court lists

The report is part of the Commission's Contempt of Court Project that also looked at juror misconduct on the Internet and contempt in the face of the court.

The Commission has provided quite a number of consultation documents, including one on contempt of court in other jurisdictions including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland.