Proceedings in the Constitutional Court should be streamed live on a court website, justice grandee Giovanni Bonello has recommended.
The retired judge, who served on the European Court for Human Rights for 12 years, was speaking in the aftermath of a speech by Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi, who complained about journalists who write to him with questions.
The Chief Justice said journalists should wait until judges retire before asking questions as providing answers could complicate ongoing cases and trigger calls for recusal.
In answers to questions from Times of Malta, Judge Bonello said that although the Chief Justice was right in instructing media to refrain from putting questions directly to the judiciary, “the courts should have a dedicated media unit".
It's function would be to "liaise with the public, to answer questions, and to explain problematic happenings”.
That, he added, “would satisfy the necessities of transparency and accountability, indispensable for a healthy administration of justice, and at the same time safeguard against the contamination of the judicial process."
He added: “Justice must not only be public, but must also be seen to be public."
“That is why court proceedings in private are the exception to the exception, justifiable only by the most compelling reasons of public interest.”
Asked about the possibility of streaming delivery of sentences live online, he said he would go a “step further” and called for all Constitutional Court proceedings to be streamed live online.
“Many basic issues of governance are discussed and determined in the Constitutional Court,” he said. For that reason, live streaming of its proceedings would “enlighten” the public and foster “higher levels of accountability, credibility and competence”.
Live streaming of the Constitutional Court’s proceedings would enlighten the public and foster higher levels of accountability
Dedicated media unit
Many national courts and especially higher courts of European countries have a functioning press office, according to Jacques Rene Zammit, a Maltese lawyer who works as a press attaché at the Press and Information Unit of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
He explained that the ECJ’s 11 press attaché are all “specialised in EU law and serve to give a voice to the court using different forms of communication”. Their mission is to communicate the “openness and accessibility” of EU laws, and to reach out to the wider public “beyond the academic and judicial fields”.
Dr Zammit is an expert in EU constitutional law and before his current posting he served as a judicial assistant to one of the judges. He is now responsible for Malta, UK and Ireland at the press office, while also handling queries in English from across the EU.
“Very often,” he said, “a press release is a much more immediate and effective tool to communicate the general idea of a judgment to the press. It presents a clear summary of the judgment thus avoiding the risk of misinterpretation by journalists who might not be specialised in law.
"It may also be complemented with other procedural explanations that clarify how a judgment or decision fits within a wider process such as for example whether there is a possibility of appeal.”
The work of the ECJ’s press attachés ranges from handling queries from the public about the workings of the court to proactive outreach in cases of seminal judgments. The press office identifies cases on a daily basis “that might benefit from higher exposure and prepares press releases that are intended to ‘speak’ to the general public, rendering the court judgments and their import much more accessible”.
The ECJ, as well as other continental national courts, typically also publish annual reports and run other media or public information campaigns.
Most courts also have eclectic websites.
Malta’s equivalent – the eCourts website – holds details of civil and commercial cases, including searchable judgments, but its “user-friendliness could be improved”, according to Judge Bonello.
Many national courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, put up webcasts of hearings and delivery of sentences on such websites.