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30/01/2025
On 24 January 2025, the Court of Appeal (Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls and Warby and King LJJ) allowed the appeal against a reporting restrictions order made by Williams J in December 2024. The reporting restrictions order prevented the media reporting the names of three judges who had been involved in the historical family proceedings that related to Sara Sharif (and her siblings), who was later brutally murdered by her father and stepmother. In granting permission to appeal, the Master of the Rolls stated that “the appeal raises questions that are of considerable public importance”. The appeal was heard on an expedited basis on 14 and 15 January 2025. The appeal was allowed primarily on the basis that Williams J did not have jurisdiction to prevent publication of the judges’ names when he made the anonymity order. The potential jurisdictional foundation for the order had been section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and s. 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981. The Court of Appeal held that Williams J had no evidential basis on which to think that the threshold for the application of Articles 2, 3 or 8 ECHR had been reached. Sian Reeves, led by Mathew Purchase KC, and instructed by the Government Legal Department, acted for the judges in the historic proceedings relating to Sara Sharif. A link to the judgment can be found here. This case has been widely reported in the media. |