Anonymity
74.At the hearing Mr Calhaem applied for an order that the parties should be granted anonymity.75.In A v M [2021] EWFC 89, I stated at [104]:“In step with the modern recognition of the vital public importance of transparency, my default position for the future will be to publish my financial remedy judgments in full without anonymisation, save as to the identity of children. Derogations from that default position will have to be distinctly justified.”76.I think it would be as well for me to explain why, after due reflection, I consider that the current rubric which is systematically attached, as a default condition, to all financial remedy judgments is likely to be completely ineffective save in relation to judgments about child maintenance. That rubric states (in its current form):“This judgment was delivered in private. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published on condition that (irrespective of what is contained in the judgment) in any published version of the judgment the anonymity of the children and members of their family must be strictly preserved. All persons, including representatives of the media, must ensure that this condition is strictly complied with. Failure to do so will be a contempt of court.” 77.In A v M at [106] I surmised that the fixation with secrecy in financial remedy cases was probably traceable to the provisions in the Matrimonial Causes Rules which made the Registrar a first instance judge of a number of ancillary relief applications. I referred to the 1973 Rules and speculated that earlier versions said the same. I have since examined the arrangements for dispatching business from the dawn of judicial divorce on 1 January 1858. The early legislation 78.A key provision was section 46 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 which provided that:
- respondent wife
- Mr Justice Mostyn:
- Preliminary comments
- Costs
- £5,401,503.
- Background facts
- former
- The wife’s application to be released from her undertaking
- Anonymity
- Mode of taking Evidence.
- The Judge Ordinary of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes may sit in Chambers.
- The Treasury to cause Chambers to be provided.
- Powers of Judge when sitting in Chambers.
- as if sitting in open Court
- The Registrars to do all Acts heretofore done by Surrogates.
- The language of the order provides for privacy at the hearing. It has nothing to do with secrecy as to the facts of the case.
- during all my experience at the Bar and on the Bench I have never heard it suggested that there is the slightest obligation of secrecy as to what passes in chambers. Everything which there transpires is and always has been spoken of with precisely the same freedom as that which passes in Court
- Beyond and besides this the Court acquires no power or jurisdiction over an individual by reason of his having become a litigant. He remains in all other respects as free and as independent of interference from the Court as he was before the suit was instituted or as any other member of the public is who has never been a litigant.
- the fact of his having been compelled to be a litigant cannot put him for all time in the position of being in statu pupillari to the judge before whom the cause has come
- , I rebel against the suggestion that according to English law he may do this only so far as it may accord with the notions of some judge who, as such, has no more authority to act towards him as a moral director in his behaviour in life after the suit is over than has the man in the street.
- The conception of the Court interfering with litigants otherwise than by granting the relief which it is empowered and bound to grant is wholly vicious and strikes at the foundation of the status and duties of judges.
- The serious encroachment on personal liberty which is here proposed is not supported by a single decision. There is on record no case where the Courts have asserted a right to control the personal acts of litigants after the conclusion of the suit except to enforce the relief granted.
- I cannot forbear adding that in my opinion nothing would be more detrimental to the administration of justice in any country than to entrust the judges with the power of covering the proceedings before them with the mantle of inviolable secrecy.”
- reporting
- unless derived from any part of the proceedings conducted in open court