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Paper: Gulf Between Civil-Common Law Countries on Openness of Court Decisions, March 2017
- By Raphael CLD
- 10 March 2017
Paper: Gulf Between Civil-Common Law Countries on Openness of Court Decisions, March 2017
For many years now, an apparent conundrum has lurked just beneath the surface among European jurisdictions. In the Common Law countries – namely the United Kingdom and Ireland – full court decisions, including the names of the parties, are generally accessible to the public. In the rest of Europe, governed by the civil law, however, such decisions are normally published only with the names of the parties redacted. The apparent rationale for the former is the idea of open justice, while in the latter group of countries the idea of personal data protection reigns supreme. CLD has prepared a paper on this issue, highlighting the contradictions and analysing the issue from a human rights perspective.
The paper is available here. CLD welcomes comments and feedback on its paper.
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