Positive Free Speech and Public Access to Courts

Abstract

Even the most casual observer of courts in the UK, whether through crime dramas or news reports, will likely have some awareness of the guiding principle that for justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. But if one digs beneath that popular and well - cemented phrase, understood as critical to the rule of law, it becomes clear that open justice takes many different forms and is in practice a complex principle to administer and enforce. Clearly, the UK courts have a positive obligation in law to provide information about their activities, but to what extent? Just how much, and by what method and why, are questions that are contested and open for interpretation. This chapter uses the positive free speech framework and normative arguments forwarded in this collection to address these questions and to suggest how the judiciary and courts service should be publicly communicating what happens in court. Accepting the premise that there are positive duties on the state that ‘insist[s] that everyone be able to exercise their rights’ in order to ‘support diverse speech environments’, and that positive free speech is a ‘central element existing alongside concerns about legal limitations on speech’, it proposes a way forward for further enhancing positive free speech in a court setting.