I am unhappy with this trend, what with being a firm supporter of Louis Brandeis' 1913 contention that "if the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects" (a sentiment he reformulated several times, the most common variant quoted today being the simplified "sunlight is the best disinfectant").
Justice, it seems to me, is (or should be) a profoundly public act: it is the court acting on behalf of us all to adjudicate between us and to protect society. Famously, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. But if the business of the court is done in private it negates much of the benefit of a system of communal justice, leaving behind a swirling miasma of doubt and uncertainty, removing the possibility of us reading the judgements of the court and drawing our own conclusions.
I know there are then contradictions: each of us as individuals risks having the very business we wish to keep private paraded in public for all to see. But it seems to me that that is the price each of us pays for living in a system with an open and fair judiciary. It is a paradox at the heart of our society, but it is one that I can resolve to my own satisfaction by accepting that holding certain principles may cost us something, and this is that price.
So how strange to encounter our saintly and erudite Prime Minister's "thinking" on the latest super-injunction: "It might be odd to hear it, but I don't really have the answer to this one, I need to do some more thinking about it. It is an odd situation if the judges are making the law rather than parliament".
Savour the idiocy of that last sentence: if the Prime Minister really has no knowledge of the entire common law basis of England's judicial system then I would suggest he isn't fit to pass comment on it. It is the complete failure of Parliament to address privacy law that has left a gaping hole in the legal fabric: where there are holes in the legal fabric it really is the job of judges to extrapolate and adjudicate in such a way that the hole is darned.
Parliament can, of course, at any time intervene in this process, but presumably they're all far too busy claiming expenses and pontificating on the latest fashionable issues for them to have time to craft a coherent and measured law on privacy.
Incidentally (and I'm sure any lawyers reading this will correct me if I'm wrong), the judicial origins of the super-injunction lie in the "Mary Bell order", a controversial order issued by the High Court to protect the child murderer Mary Bell on her release from custody, on the basis that there was a baying mob waiting to murder her, that - having served her punishment - her actions as a child should not colour the entirety of her remaining life, and such an order was the only way to protect her. The same order was applied to the child murderers of James Bulger.
These Mary Bell orders strike me as proportionate and reasonable. But I am unhappy at their extension to the sex lives of "slebs" which they want kept quiet so that their children are not damaged by taunting at school. Hm... if protecting their kids is their primary concern, perhaps they should keep their cocks and fannies (delete as applicable) inside their pants.
Incidentally, this post has been largely illustrated with a random selection of talentless no-hopers or braindead "slebs" with what I consider to be notorious "private" lives which most of them sell to cloyingly intrusive magazines for the prurient interest of the public -- I have no idea whether any or all or none of them have applied for or been granted super-injunctions. Oh, and one of the pictures is of Justice Brandeis (who was neither a talentless no-hoper nor braindead). You can probably work out which is which.
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