JUSTICE this week submitted a response to the Ministry of Justice Consultation Paper for amendments to Part 39 of the Civil Procedure Rules (‘CPR’). Part 39 of the CPR governs the principle of ‘open justice’ and the circumstances where it is possible to hold hearings otherwise than in public. JUSTICE welcomes the MOJ’s intention to clarify the circumstances in which it might be permissible to derogate from the open justice principle.
Our submission proposed that any rules governing the principles around open justice need to be future-proofed, to accommodate what hearings may look like in the future, and easy to understand for self-represented parties.