Tweeting For Free Speech

Suppression orders are a serious impediment to the transparency of the judicial process. There may be situations in which suppression orders are warranted, such as where there is an obvious and imminent danger to a litigant or witness.

However, such orders are becoming commonplace, and are being used more widely:

The use of "super-injunctions", under which commercial corporations claim the right to keep secret the fact that they have been to court, has been growing. Anonymity is also increasingly being granted to individual litigants.

For example Trafigura recently obtained an injunction to stop the Guardian reporting parliamentary proceedings, specifically a question asked in the House of Commons about the dumping of toxic waste. The injunction also prohibited the Guardian identifying the party seeking the injunction or the injunction itself.

An interesting part of the story is the role of Twitter in getting the story out:

First, bloggers and twitterers started linking to a report on the Guardian website, which told people a High Court judge had "prevented" the paper "reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds."

Then, bloggers Jack of Kent and Richard Wilson started chiselling away at clues in the article to find out who had won the injunction and what the story related to.

Next, a steady stream of twitterers started posting links to Guido Fawkes, Don't Get Fooled Again, The Spectator and One Man And His Blog - websites that had decided to post the full text of Farrelly's question - to Twitter hash tags #Trafigura and #CarterRuck.

Around 10am on Tuesday, #Trafigura had become the top trend on Twitter, with #CarterRuck following close behind.

Stephen Fry tweeted 800,000+ followers: "Outrageous gagging order. It's in reference to the Trafigura oil dumping scandal. Grotesque and squalid."

While Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger informed the Twitterverse: "#CarterRuck ... High Court hearing [to challenge the injunction] fixed for 2pm."

Ultimately although a degree of common sense prevailed in this case, the larger issue of judicial transparency remains.