Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sausages and the Judicial Process: the Limits of Transparency

Lord Neuberger spoke recently at the Annual Conference of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
His talk is only a little bit about sausages, and a lot about transparency in law - the need to see that justice is seen to be done.
He also walks us through court procedure before and after a hearing (in the UK), which was rather interesting.
It must have been great to listen to, and is a fun read.
Excerpt para 18
It is essential that our judgments are as intelligible as possible. A common law system requires a certain consideration of previous authorities. However, as Sir Anthony Mason has said: “[s]ometimes one feels when reading an English, Canadian or Australian judgment that it is written with the object of convincing the reader that the author has read and considered all that could conceivably be relevant to the issue in hand.” Or as I put it in a lecture last year: “Reading some judgments one rather loses the will to live – and I can say from experience that it is particularly disconcerting when it’s your own judgment that you are reading.” 

Enjoy

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