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.
We claim and obtain obedience and respect for our office because we are nothing other than the appointed agents for enforcing upon each individual the performance of his obligations. That obedience and that respect must cease if, disregarding the difference between legislative and judicial functions, we attempt ourselves to create obligations and impose them on individuals who refuse to accept them and who have done nothing to render those obligations binding upon them against their will.It is this which makes me take so serious a view of the present appeal. The Courts are the guardians of the liberties of the public and should be the bulwark against all encroachments on those liberties from whatsoever side they may come. It is their duty therefore to be vigilant. But they must be doubly vigilant against encroachments by the Courts themselves. In that case it is their own actions which they must bring into judgment and it is against themselves that they must protect the public. The magnitude of the danger is illustrated by the present case.
- 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