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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Each and every one of these cases is - assuming this is the whole truth - a total disgrace to whatever goes for justice.

The degree of petty vengefulness on display is revolting.

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> assuming this is the whole truth

Agreed - although something about how the author has written their summaries sets off all my "I'm very deliberately being given a one-sided version of this story" alarms.

So check the case coverage on the Guardian. I think except the most recent one they're on there.

You can also find some righteous indignation from the social workers that caused some of these cases. In the past, nearly all the media has been critical of the court, including the Guardian

> So check the case coverage on the Guardian. I think except the most recent one they're on there.

The details still seem pretty thin though, and finding a source which reliably summarises quite chunky texts is a job in itself.

For example, here's one ruling linked from the Guardian which implies a very different story to that being told by the press:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2012/B31.html

(a quite incredibly poorly-edited or mistyped or, I dunno, redacted ruling at that!)

It doesn't take an age to read, but it does take a good amount of time to digest and understand - and even then you walk away with an incomplete picture.

I'm still on the fence.

Seems very clear to me - the Court has ordered a stop to a pattern of behaviour, the person so ordered has not stopped, and so the court is "turning up the volume" by using the powers it has available to it.

Regardless of what you may think of the duration of the sentence (and I'll assume that it's within the bounds of both legality and jurisprudence for the circumstances), the Judge takes into account that the ordered person probably didn't believe that the Court would follow through on things.

Or may have believed it but chose to stand by their family member in a time of need.

This is indeed the trouble here. Because the family courts are (for some very good reasons, like protection of children) held _in camera_, (which counterintuitively for english speakers means no cameras, nor direct reporting allowed), we don't have many details. This is of course something which we might be able to fix better with newer human-information technology approaches, or more oprn meta-processes regarding feedback loops for justice. But, it's a torny problem. We used to trust the authorities. Often, they mean well, but they can be corrupted by specific interests in specific cases (rich people networks), or make grave errors due to institutional cultural corruption.

How is an absence of reporting meant to protect children?

Because sometimes reporting can be harmful to children. Think about the sort of cases with abusive parents and relatives. It does no one any good for the details of those cases to be splashed over front page of the Sun.

Wouldn't measures like just keeping the names and images of the people involved out of the press be sufficient?

There's reform happening at courts of protection and the family division to publish more, with appropriate anonymisation.

Remember that these courts deal with really vulnerable people.

Have a read of some of these: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html

Not really relevant here, but "in camera" means literally in a room or chamber, and hence private. The modern word "camera" derives from the same word: early "cameras" like the camera obscura were literally rooms. Dark room in the case of camera obscura, which is also now a photography term with a different meaning.

Gotta "love" random appearance of latin in (english) law.

Yes, and English is full of them, especially in law. It's hardly random. English law was informed by Roman jurisprudence. And Latin was used in books and courts (especially ecclesiastical courts). I'd have to look up more details, and if interested, your searches further into this would easily surpass anything i can remember!

It's not the whole truth, it's blatant bollocks and it's really disappointing to see many on HN fail to do even simple debunking.

http://www.headoflegal.com/2013/12/04/booker-hemming-and-the...

http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/

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