Nameless judges

Any move towards secret justice needs open public debate.

“There is no person known to law as the anonymous justice of the peace,” said Lord Justice Watkins VC in 1986. Sitting with Lords Justices Russell and Mann, he upheld a challenge brought by the Observer journalist David Leigh against magistrates at Felixstowe who had refused to give their names.

And Watkins did not confine his remarks to magistrates:

Beca…