Family court transparency

New research from Cardiff University's School of Law and Politics suggests that guidance given to judges to routinely publish their judgments is not being consistently followed, leaving the public with a patchy understanding of the family justice system in England and Wales. Issued in 2014, the guidance was intended to address perceptions, especially in the media, of 'secrecy' and 'justice behind closed doors' when important decisions are made about children in family courts. These claims arise from the way that court rules ensure most family cases are held in private, to protect children and other vulnerable parties, and are subject to reporting restrictions preventing such parties being identified. A better understanding of the family justice system. The guidance requires judges to send fully anonymised versions of their judgments in certain types of case to BAILII, a freely accessible legal research website. The intention was to enable both the press and the public to have a better understanding of the family justice system, by making it more transparent. However, following concerns expressed about poor anonymisation and some risks of jigsaw identification, and also observations that relatively few cases seemed to be appearing on BAILII, an evaluation of the effects of the guidance was undertaken by Cardiff University's School of Law and Politics, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.