On 03/08/2011 12:50, Ben Campbell wrote:
As part of a little experiment into tracking down sources of news
articles, I was wondering if there was any good way to track down
information about UK court cases?
In my hopelessly naive idealised view of the world, each court case
would have a nice, permanent, URL on a .gov.uk site somewhere which
pulled together all the public information pertaining to that case -
title, participants, schedules, name of court, transcripts (are they
public?), whatever...
And obviously it'd be a simple matter of typing a few relevant keywords
into a search engine to find said URL.
But of course out here in the real world, the web (particularly the
govt-run bits) is a big steaming heap of useless poo.
I've just spent an hour or so trying to track down _anything_ official
about a court case mentioned in a story, with no luck :-(
Can anyone tell me how I - someone with no detailed legal knowledge -
should go about such a task?
With difficulty. The system is designed very much for the benefit of
insiders, such as legal professionals and journalists, and is very
user-unfriendly as far as the general public are concerned.
Part of the problem is that court cases tend to proceed on an ad-hoc
basis anyway, with adjournments and postponements all part of the
process and no specified timescale for any particular case. So it isn't
possible to say in advance that, for example, case A will be heard in
court 1 from 10.30am to 3.30pm on the nth of Whatember as that schedule
is dependent on many other things (not least of which being whichever
other cases are taking place at the same location and the same time).
The daily lists of cases (which are available on the web, if you know
where to look[1]) change by the hour, for example, so if you were
planning to attend a hearing then you have to be prepared to keep an eye
on the schedule for any alterations.
[1] Usually, in the Internet equivalent of the bottom of a locked filing
cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
'Beware of the Leopard'.
(if anyone is interested, it's a High Court challenge, mentioned in this
article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021670/Indian-Vali-Chapti-UK-migration-racism-row-insists-wont-learn-English.html
You will probably be able to find this listed at the Court Service
website[2] or Courtserve[3] when it's actually scheduled. Of course, you
need to know which court it's in (there's no global search facility),
and it won't show up at all if it hasn't actually been scheduled yet.
The media report is almost certainly simply the result of a preliminary
hearing, and the substantive hearing probably hasn't yet made it onto
the roster.
When it's over, the decision will probably be published on Bailii[4],
but you will, again, need to know which court and at least some of the
details as the search facility is less than helpful.
I have used the word "probably" a lot in the above comments. There are
occasions when it might be more appropriate to replace it with "possibly".
If you're interested in learning more, I've blogged about this[5] in the
past and also issued a few FOI requests to the court service[6] about
it. It's also been the subject of discussion elsewhere on the web[7].
[2]
http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/courts-and-tribunals/courts/daily-court-hearings.htm
[3] http://www.courtserve.net
[4] http://www.bailii.org
[5] http://mark.goodge.co.uk/2011/07/the-unseen-side-of-justice/
[6] These three:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_provided_to_courtel
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_provided_to_bailii_f
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/public_interest_provisions_for_e
[7] eg,
http://meejalaw.com/2011/07/20/who-holds-our-courts-data-fois-reveal-hm-courts-exclusive-contracts/
Mark
--
Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine
http://mark.goodge.co.uk
http://www.ratemysupermarket.com
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