The hype about hyperinjunctions is just extraordinary at the moment. There is a vast amount of blogging and commentary on the topic, but I’d like to focus on the issue as it relates to family law. I’m specifically not going to comment on Baroness Deech’s suggestion that women are to blame for the rise of (super)injunctions lest I should myself become a woman saying something unpleasant about another woman (although I have to observe that it takes two to “tango”, and Baroness Deech appears to identify only one aspect of such mutually exploitative relationships).

The debate has been warming up for a while, but it has really kicked off as a result of John Hemming MP’s various remarks in the House. Hemming is well known in the family law world as a vocal critic of the family justice system, it’s secrecy and it’s role in the removal of children from their families.

I think it will be helpful if I set out here some of the recent blog posts that cover this topic.

Carl Gardner at Head of Legal has published a number of posts tracking developments over the last couple of months, most of which have prompted extensive comments, many of them from Mr Hemming himself. The posts and the comment threads are worth reading in full:

John Hemming MP: Abuse of Power, and Privilege (23 March) in which Carl discusses speeches in Parliament the previous week by John Hemming concerning “Andrew France, whose rape conviction was quashed on appeal in 2009, and who Hemming says was pressurised by a local authority into agreeing not to contact Hemming:

The essence of it is that he has no real choice. If he does not agree to it, the local council, of which I used to be deputy leader, would take action to take his child into care.

Hemming calls this bullying, and a contempt of Parliament.” and in which Carl notes the strong criticism of Mr Hemming by Wall LJ in RP v Nottingham (this is a blog post on which I commented at the time).

John Hemming MP: is the detail “a little bit more complex”? (28 March) in which Carl noted a subsequent speech given to the Freedom Association in the course of which it was said that Mr Hemming’s remarks “risk[ed] perhaps giving the impression that the judge had been involved in threats to punish speaking to an MP by taking a child into care.” Carl asked whether actually the facts might be a little bit more complex? Continue Reading…