A unprecedented ban on naming judges who oversaw proceedings related to the care of Sara Sharif before she was murdered is likely to have a “corrosive impact” on public confidence in the justice system, the court of appeal has been told.
Mr Justice Williams ruled in December that the media could not name three judges who oversaw three sets of family court proceedings relating to the 10-year-old schoolgirl over concerns they would be subject to a “virtual lynch mob”. He also said he did not believe the media could be trusted to report matters in a fair, accurate and responsible way.
Several media organisations that won the right to challenge the order, including the Guardian, told a court of appeal hearing on Tuesday that the ban posed a threat to open justice and the judges should be named in the interests of transparency.
Chris Barnes, representing the freelance journalists Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers, told the court: “The order is unsound and it is also one likely to raise public suspicion and prove counterproductive.”
In written submissions, he said the judge’s decision was “unfair, poorly reasoned and unsustainable” and “out of step with the recognised need to promote transparency, and media reporting, in the family court”.
He said: “Judges very frequently sit on controversial cases and that, notwithstanding this reality, anonymity for a judge is not something which has any domestic precedent, indeed, it runs contrary to all established norms. To seek anonymity for judges, save where truly exceptionally justified, is likely to have a corrosive impact on public confidence in the judiciary and the wider justice system.”
He added: “The maintenance of such an order, with a wholly generalised and insufficient basis, represents a return to the comfort blanket of anonymity in which true accountability is lost. The judge’s order preventing the naming of those judges is unjustified, and undermines necessary efforts to increase transparency in the family justice system. It cannot be allowed to stand.”
Sara was murdered by her father, Urfan Sharif, 43, and stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, in August 2023, less than four years after being placed in their care.
While Williams allowed details of the earlier family court proceedings to be published, he banned the naming of any professionals – including social workers, guardians and experts – involved in the case. He said seeking to argue that individuals involved in proceedings were responsible for Sara’s death was “equivalent to holding the lookout on the Titanic responsible for its sinking”.
Adam Wolanski KC, representing the Guardian, BBC and other news organisations, said the comparison was “bizarre and wrong”. In written submissions he said: “Because of their role as dispensers of justice, judges must expect their decisions and their decision making to be the subject of public scrutiny.”
He added: “Judges are the face of justice itself. They cannot be equated with ‘professionals’ who act as witnesses or in other roles in the courts. This suggestion of equivalence with other participants in court proceedings betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the judges’ role. The judiciary is one of the main repositories of state power.”
He argued that the ability of the media to identify participants in court proceedings was an essential part of the open justice principle.
Wolanski said Williams’s proposal that the media give notice to parties in advance of publication as to whether they wished to identify judges and others, so that the court could decide whether that was appropriate, was “unworkable”. “Another word for that is censorship and it is not the way the English law works,” he told the court.
Cyrus Larizadeh KC, for Sharif, said in his written submissions that he was “concerned that no harm should come to the judge(s) who presided in the historic proceedings”.
The court heard that the judges had concerns about being identified after the intense scrutiny in the aftermath of the judgment.
The hearing before Sir Geoffrey Vos, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Warby is expected to conclude on Wednesday.