Open justice

HMCTS: exploring the future of open justice

HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) discusses its work with Policy Lab, where public users were asked for their views on open justice.

About the author: Luke Fusi is Future Hearings Design Lead at HM Courts and Tribunals Service.Open justice is a fundamental principle, essential to our justice system and of paramount importance to the rule of law. The virtues of this principle, extolled by Lord Hewart CJ in R v Sussex Justices ex p McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256, that ‘justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done’.

Delivering open justice

Nearly 100 years later, the HMCTS reform programme is absolutely committed to ensuring that our reformed courts and tribunals continue to be as open as they are currently. This requires us to rethink how open justice is delivered and consider how new digital tools or approaches can open up new opportunities, as well as pose challenges that must be met head-on.

There are many aspects to open justice. As our court reform programme introduces new digital services and increases the use of video technology, the way in which people interact with courts and tribunals will change. This requires us to look at how we maintain open justice in a digital world. It also prompts us to recalibrate how the programme makes use of data, as set out in the recently published report by Dr Natalie Byrom, and what we can do to promote and support the media in accessing and reporting from our courts.¹

Partnering with Policy Lab to improve understanding

To better understand the general public’s perceptions and expectations in regard to an open justice system, HMCTS partnered with the Policy Lab to bring a fresh perspective to how we can gage likely public reaction to some ideas about upholding the openness of the system.

Policy Lab is an open and multidisciplinary team of civil servants established to develop, test and demonstrate experimental and people-centred approaches to tackling the government’s most thorny policy challenges. Based in the Cabinet Oÿce, they specialise in partnering with teams across government to help them broaden their understanding of who their policy proposals might affect and support them in co-designing solutions.

During summer 2019, HMCTS and Policy Lab ran four workshops in London and Manchester.² These were attended by 44 members of the general public - who had not had recent contact with the justice system - to discuss their understanding of and feelings towards open justice. These small focus groups considered a set of scenarios depicting the future and shared their reactions to some concepts about open justice in a digital age.

What we learned

Findings from this series of workshops provided helpful insights that will assist the programme to develop its thinking further.³ Some of these interesting conclusions are summarised below.

• Justice tended to be defined very narrowly, primarily in terms of outcomes and, generally, the more extreme examples of criminal cases such as murder.
• The media was, by far, the most common medium through which participants hear or learn about the justice system, and as a result is the primary way through which justice is seen to be made open and accessible to the public.
• Open justice was generally felt to be highly valued, with great importance placed on people being seen to be being punished and held accountable to the law, to deter others from committing crime. Interestingly, it did not seem to be required to instil trust in the system or prove that UK justice is free of corruption.
• There was a strong sense that there is a limit to how open justice should be. Some concerns were raised around allowing the process to become influenced by the public and media, creating show trials in the cases of well-known people.
• People tended to base their attitudes on whether those involved had a right to anonymity based on the type of hearing. In general, it was felt that family cases are not in the public interest, and strong feelings were expressed about the privacy that should be afforded to those involved. In the criminal jurisdiction, however, details about the case and those concerned tended to be viewed as information to which the public were far more entitled.