Introduction to Tribunal Tweets
what we do and why
Tribunal Tweets is a group of volunteer citizen reporters dedicated to open justice. We live tweet from various court and tribunal proceedings in primarily England and Wales. Live tweeting is a contemporaneous record of the public hearings. Our objective is to report proceedings fairly without bias or prejudice. Our live tweet stream is not a perfect stenographic record such as might be provided by a court reporter. Many of the proceedings we cover do not have such a stenographic record.
There are currently few journalistic resources dedicated to coverage of legal proceedings and it is difficult for traditional news outlets to give adequate coverage to most legal proceedings. The core principle of open justice is that justice should be administered in public: proceedings must be held in public, evidence must be communicated publicly, and the Court should not prevent the fair, accurate and contemporaneous reporting of proceedings by the media unless strictly necessary. We respect any reporting restrictions imposed by courts or tribunals.
Tribunal Tweets covers cases relevant to free speech, medical ethics, protected beliefs and human rights to uphold the principle of open justice. We currently have two active Twitter accounts: @tribunaltweets and @tribunaltweets2.
We started our activity in July 2021. See a sample below of the cases we have covered since then. We have attended some in person and some virtually. While a case is ongoing we do not include any commentary or links to any commentary written by third parties. We link to evidence and information that is publicly available where it is appropriate to do so. Once a case is concluded - media organisations, claimants, respondents and other commentators may suggest links to relevant analysis. Those requests are considered carefully and links may be included where analysis is balanced, factual, dispassionate and may add to readers understanding of the case and its impact. Links are not endorsements or adoption of the work product in question.
A complete catalogue of our work is found here:
