Project status: Consultation
Documents Terms of reference Summary of consultation paper Summary of consultation paper (in Welsh) Consultation paper The problem “Contempt of court” refers to a wide variety of conduct that may impede or interfere with a court case or the administration of justice. Examples include deliberately breaching a court order, refusing to answer the court’s questions … Read more >
Project status: Analysis of responses
Work on this project was suspended. The issues have been taken forward in a subsequent project on contempt of court.
Project status: Complete
We published a report explaining and setting out our recommendations in this area on 26 March 2014. In our report we recommended: ensuring that postponement orders on court reporting are all posted on a single publicly accessible website (a similar website currently operates in Scotland), and including a further restricted service where, for a charge, … Read more >
Project status: Complete
We published a report explaining and setting out our recommendations in this area on 9 December 2013. In our report we recommended the creation of a new criminal offence for jurors conducting prohibited research. This recommendation was implemented by section 71 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (inserting a new section 20A into … Read more >
Project status: Complete
This historic form of contempt covers conduct likely to undermine the administration of justice or public confidence in courts and judges. In August 2012 we published a consultation paper on scandalising the court. This work was brought forward to feed into the Government’s consideration of the proposal in the Crime and Courts Bill to abolish … Read more >
Project status: Pre-project
“Contempt of court” covers a wide variety of conduct which undermines or has the potential to undermine the course of justice, and the procedures which are designed to deal with them. The law governing contempt of court is vast. The Law Commission published a consultation paper on contempt of court in November 2012. It focused … Read more >