What will Neuberger’s filter of choice be?
The UK Supreme Court has set up an Instagram account ahead of its much-anticipated road trip to Edinburgh, where justices will be hearing their first ever cases outside London.
Lord Neuberger and others will be considering sham marriages in Sadovska, national planning policies in Elsick, and determinate sentence prisoners in Brown in a week of appeals at Edinburgh’s City Chambers.
Around 120 seats are being arranged for members of the public to come and watch these Edinburgh proceedings unfold first hand. But for those of us who can’t make it, the court will be sharing images from this unprecedented set of hearings as it joins the Instagram craze.
Setting up an Instagram account is yet another move by the Supreme Court towards greater openness and transparency. In 2011 the court joined Twitter, and since 2012 has published video summaries of every judgment on YouTube. On its latest social media account, Mark Ormerod, the court’s chief executive, said:
This channel will serve as a window into the life of the Supreme Court beyond the courtroom. Rather than focusing on the cases heard here, it will showcase the work we do with schools and universities from around the world, and our role as a popular visitor attraction in Parliament Square.
Neuberger will be overseeing all three cases, and for our Scottish readers this may be one of the last chances to see His Lordship in action before his retirement this summer.
The president of the court has long been in favour of hearing appeals elsewhere in the country, to alter public perception that the bench is ‘London-focussed’. At one lecture in 2016, Neuberger commented:
Ideally, we would sit, say, in Edinburgh and hear not just one Scottish case, but also an English, Welsh or Northern Irish case in order to remind people that we are a UK court. When I mentioned this to some English lawyers, they expressed doubts about having to travel from London to Edinburgh — or Cardiff or Belfast. ‘But that is the equivalent of what Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish lawyers appearing in the Supreme Court have to do all the time’, I replied.
Pictures showcasing the court’s work both in and beyond London will be posted via @UKSupremeCourt, where the first few photos have already gone up. Here’s hoping we’ll see Neuberger post a couple of selfies.
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