(Alberta) The Board considered the degree of publicity appropriate at the trial of divorce suits. The undefended divorce of a well-known politician was conducted not in a court room (though there were empty courts available) but in the Judges’ Library. There was direct public access to the courts, but not to the Judges’ Library. It can be approached from the same corridor which encircles the building and provides direct access to the courts, but only through a double swing door, one side of which is always fixed, and on which there is a brass plate with the word ‘Private’ in black letters on it. Through this swing door was another corridor, on the opposite wall of which was a further door to the Judges’ Library. Both this internal door and the free swinging half of the double doors were in fact open during this hearing.
Held: ‘even although it emerges in the last analysis that their actual exclusion resulted only from that word ‘Private’ on the outer door, the learned judge on this occasion, albeit unconsciously, was, their Lordships think, denying his court to the public in breach of their right to be present, a right thus expressed by Lord Halsbury in Scott -v- Scott: ‘every court of justice is open to every subject of the King’.’ (that rule is of course subject to all the strictly defined exceptions referred to above).’
Citations:
[1935] UKPC 88, [1936] AC 177
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Canada
Cited by:
Cited – Storer v British Gas plc CA 25-Feb-2000
An industrial tribunal hearing conducted behind the locked doors of the chairman’s office was not held in public, even if, in fact, no member of the public was prevented from attending. The obligation to sit in public was fundamental, and the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Family
Updated: 13 July 2022; Ref: scu.426345