Open Justice
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:54 am by David FarrarPublished this week was the “Report of an Inquiry requested by the Minister of Justice on the Publication of Names of Victims in Judicial Decisions on the Judicial Decisions Online Website of the Ministry of Justice“.
It basically finds that the Ministry of Justice staff need to fully read each and every judgement to check if aspects of it should have their names supressed, rather than just rely on the Judges ticking the right box to indicate name suppression applies, which will indicate so by way of a large banner at the top of the judgement.
In 11 cases (out of 1,500) Judges neglected to tick the right box, and hence judgements appeared without victims names supressed.
The main recommendation of John Marshall QC is that Ministry staff no longer rely on whether the banner appears or not, but read the judgements in full as they are legally obliged to make sure the law is complied with even if a Judge has not indicated it to them.
This is probably the right thing to do, but a bit of a pity as it means that the judgements will no longer be able to be processed by a “web monkey” (my term), but by fully qualified lawwyers, which is a bit of a waste of their talents. It would be nice to think one could just rely on Judges getting it right.
Of course one has human error, but I wonder if one could program the technology to alert a Judge if they have not ticked a name supression banner box, based on say a word search of various offences.
Anyway that is not the major foccus of this post. It was this comment by Mr Marshall:
Serious consideration should be given in discussions between the Ministry and the judiciary to changing the default setting on the Judges’ IT system to “N” = Not to publish
I think that would be a very bad steop to take. the default setting should be to publish.
Related posts:
- Justice Wilson’s Judicial Conduct Panel
- Whale to Jail?
- Justice Wilson
- Puerile attempt at blame game backfires on Labour
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:59 am
You wouldn’t be blogging on Good Friday without a license now would you?
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 9:02 am
Less than 1% and we’re all getting worried and adding further cost by getting legally trained staff to read all judgments.
I can live with .8%. let’s face it, who can name that .8% of victims who were named who shouldn’t have been? And I mean all of them.
There must be a way to stop that .8% being published without all this hand-wringing and added cost. Surely.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 9:23 am
Seems to be a belt and braces approach which runs counter to Government moves to cut down on bureauracy. It seems the judges want backside protection here. However they have associates etc who are quite capable of providing a second check and who can refer a ‘grey area’ judgment back.
Some judgments form part of the law and hence should be open to all to see and search. Also since the taxpayer subsidises the operation of the courts system then surely the taxpayer should be able to see what he/she is getting for his/her money. The internet now makes this possible. It is unfortunate that the ‘judgments’ database has ground to a halt since 7 March. There is also a web page of ‘public interest’ judgments which contain all Supreme Court judgments and some from other courts – heaven knows how they are selected. For example some sentencing notes are put there, but many others of significant interest are not (eg Clayton Weatherston sentencing notes though they may have been too ghastly to publish).
Judgments database site is at (frozen as at 7 March):
http://jdo.justice.govt.nz/jdo/Introduction.jsp
http://jdo.justice.govt.nz/jdo/Search.jsp (search engine)
‘Public interest’ judgments are at:
Vote:http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/from/decisions/judgments.html
April 22nd, 2011 at 9:53 am
It has to be asked if those who are too incompetent to tick the correct box on a form should be presiding over a Court of Justice.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 10:33 am
# Neebone (17) Says:
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:59 am
You wouldn’t be blogging on Good Friday without a license now would you?
No that’s not correct. Just not allowed to open your shop to sell anything. Now I wonder if the advertising is bugged so that any clicks will register tomorrow.
Still the National Socialist Govt will fix this won’t they. Oh no its a conscience vote can’t whip them up to do sensible stuff.
Bring back Winston He will get them over the line on this one.
Weak kneed God fearing socialists.
kneebone?
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 10:52 am
JOHN L Marshall has always been like his late father, John Ross Marshall, a conservative bugger.
Vote:The difference is that John L grew up in cloistered Bolton Street and was always destined for silk.
John Ross went thru the war and earned his spurs the hard way
April 22nd, 2011 at 12:08 pm
If somebody on minimum wage made that many mistakes, they’d probably be fired. But it’s fine for judges.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Cost/benefit doesn’t look particularly good from my flick through?
Surely there could be an IT fix which would diminish the risk while costing much less?
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 2:09 pm
This is not rocket science. Any judgment about sexual offending will raise these issues. It is sheer incompetence. This is a government department tat wants to run 50% of the defense work before the courts. God help us.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 2:32 pm
If name suppression was ended, as it should be, save for when the victim requests it, the default setting could be no check at all. It would be so rare as to be up to the judge to expressly make the necessary amendments him/her self.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Nasska: it is a court of law, not a court of justice. Sometimes they are two very different concepts.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Surely there could be an IT fix which would diminish the risk while costing much less?
The fix the Ministry has come up with cause they didn’t want to hire another two lawyers as per the report recommendation, is that now the sole checker’s manager is also now responsible for reading every word, not just skimming it, cause imagine if there were another mistake in six months. Quelle Horreur. So what other jobs does the manager now get to do, cause imagine what will happen to him, if another mistake does happen. This is the idiocy of Justice management decision-making. What a dumb solution.
I mean, firstly, discerning whether name suppression applies yes or no, should not have to take a fully qualified lawyer and even if it did that does NOT entail a fully qualified lawyer then has to carefully read every single word of the judgement to see if the suppressed’s name is mentioned. I mean really. The fool on the radio was talking about doing so in hard copy. Haven’t they heard of Word’s word search? Yes I know the name may vary. So try combos.
No business commonsense realistic thinking seems to apply, when it comes to the law. No matter what it costs, if the law says it, that’s what must happen. Someone in Justice IT said once the Supreme Court judges asked that special brass plates be made to cover the IT ports in the courtrooms, as their Lordships didn’t wish to behold the horror that is a modern IT port on a wall. And everyone in Justice saluted and said three bags full sa, cause apparently, Judges are really amazing people. Just way better than you or I. This is how precious the whole thing gets. About time this whole general attitude toward justice at any price stopped and a bit more commonsense started, IMO.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 3:15 pm
F E Smith @ 2.48pm
You’re right….on both counts.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
I just feel sorry for all those staff who have to read all the judgments regarding Penny Bright and Vince Siemer; it must be soul-destroying, and they have my sympathy.
Vote:April 22nd, 2011 at 7:47 pm
JDO is an appalling website- clunky, difficult to use, poor search engine and then it is necessary to read every decision returned to find out what you want. So it is no surprise that it has yet more problems.
Vote:The report is badly flawed because it ignores an essential element of non-publication order breach – that is publication. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for publishing decisions so it is wrong to cast the burden onto the Judges.
A better solution would be to abandon JDO altogether and send all the publishable decisions of all the Courts (that is a decision that deals with a contested issue between the parties) to NZLII (www.nzlii.org). They are publishing Youth Court decisions at the moment – suitably anonymised – so complying with non-publication orders should be a breeze. Besides, NZLII has a better search engine and at least the search strings are highlighted.
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Justinian
Vote:I have used JDO regularly — sometimes daily — but only after I have identified the case I am after. I was not familiar with the NZII site till I read your post and so I am very grateful to you. Thanks
April 22nd, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Nookin
Vote:If you know the case name that is fine, but searching on a phrase or a concept is very time consuming.
Hope you find NZLII useful
April 22nd, 2011 at 10:09 pm
IV2
Siemer’s are getting easier.
They go something like this
“The appeal has no merit and cannot possibly succeed. Leave to appeal is refused.
The Appellant is ordered to pay costs of $2500″
Some of the contempt cases are interesting too. The sheer bloody arrogance of the man is beyond belief. Reading some of the Bright cases can be quite entertaining. Judges must be quite constrained in their language and are discouraged from using terms such as moonbat and looneytunes. These terms are not yet recognised in court. So, you have to read the more temperate comments in context and imagine the words that the judges is mulling over but is not encouraged to use.
Vote: