David Eady and privacy

News of the World - Mosley storyHere are my excerpts from David Eady’s judg­ment in Mos­ley vs News Group News­pa­pers Ltd:

The law now affords pro­tec­tion to inform­a­tion in respect of which there is a reas­on­able expect­a­tion of pri­vacy, even in cir­cum­stances where there is no pre-existing rela­tion­ship giv­ing rise of itself to an enforce­able duty of con­fid­ence. That is because the law is con­cerned to pre­vent the viol­a­tion of a citizen’s autonomy, dig­nity and self-esteem. It is not simply a mat­ter of “unac­count­able” judges run­ning amok. Par­lia­ment enacted the 1998 stat­ute which requires these val­ues to be acknow­ledged and enforced by the courts… Con­tinue read­ing

Journalism and the law

I like law­yers. They always smile, even when they’re not actu­ally billing you.

Big hats off to Andy Scott of the LSE’s law depart­ment for bring­ing together a ter­rific cast of what we in journ­al­ism would — rather unima­gin­at­ively — call “top lawyers.”

It was Chatham House rules, but the law­yers thought: Con­tinue read­ing