I took part in the first of four open justice themed panel discussions last week (‘Law, Justice and the Spaces in Between’). This first webinar asked : “Does being watched change how justice is done?” and looked at the role and function of observers in trials, inquests, family courts and tribunals. It was a really interesting discussion, ranging across not only family courts but inquests and other fora. It brought together journalists, participants, lawyers, bloggers and tweeters – and I hope was interesting to the 150 odd people who attended.
Part 2 is next week.
If you would like to watch a recording of the webinar you can watch here.
Details of the rest of the series are in my blog post here.
Interesting discussion, but reveals that judges, legal practitioners and the court service have much further to go to normalise court observers.