One in five listed judgments not published: research

The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR) has said that not all courts and tribunals are routinely sending their judgments to The National Archives for publication.

The ICLR report noted that by the end of its first full year of operation, the ‘Find Case Law’ database operated by The National Archives was “largely achieving” its aim of routinely publishing new judgments from the senior courts and tribunals of England and Wales on the day they were handed down, or soon after.

However, the report highlighted “one main problem” - that around one in five listed judgments that might be expected to be published are not appearing on Find Case Law.

The best publication rates were for the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal, which achieved an average of 97% of judgments published over the year, the data revealed.

The Administrative Court sitting in London achieved an average rate of 85%.

However, the average across all the courts was just under 80%, combining both those published on the day of judgment (around 63%) with those published late – up to a month or so afterwards (another 16%).

Since The National Archives launched its Find Case Law database in mid-April 2022, the ICLR note that Find Case Law has “gradually replaced BAILII as the official archive and primary source of court judgments”.

However, the report notes that some problems remain, including that the platform interface and search functions are “still quite basic”.

The report made the following recommendations for improvement:

• HM Courts and Tribunal Service and the Judiciary should improve the support for judges in preparing and submitting their judgments for publication as an integral part of the administration of justice.
• Given the frequency of the issuance of new versions of judgments, whether for revision or to correct the neutral citation, it would make sense to provide some indication on the content itself as to which version it is and when it was updated.
• The system for the allocation of neutral citations should be reviewed to avoid accidental duplication or mis-allocation, and extended to permit the publication of county court judgments under an appropriate designation.
• Judges when authoring their judgments should be trained and encouraged to use the structural formatting available from an appropriate template, to maximise the possibilities of enrichment and visual display.

Lottie Winson