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Yesterday we blogged about the lack of news concerning the promised new Judicial Committee of the Privy Council website. Today it is operational for the first time. We suspect that this may be a coincidence but would, nevertheless, like to claim appropriate credit.
The site has a similar “look” to the Supreme Court’s site including sections on “Decided Cases” and “Court Procedures” (with helpful online forms). There is a useful explanation of the countries from which the Privy Council hears appeals – there are still a lot of ways of getting there.
The new site looks good. There are, however, one or two minor glitches to be remedied (we leave aside the lack of links to the case managment system which is not working here either). Somewhat misleadingly the site tells us that “there are no court sittings this week”. The link to future sittings gives us a blank page – the sittings on the Supreme Court’s site – along with those for the UKSC itself (there is also a link to this under JCPC “News”). “Decided Cases” has a link to House of Lords Judgments – the link should, we think, be to the judgments on the Privy Council Office’s website. Until the case management system is working it would be useful to have interim orders.
The organisational chart has not yet been organised and the “Biographies of the Justices” gives us only the Justices of the Supreme Court, perhaps wisely avoiding producing biographies of the large numbers of other eligible members of the Judicial Committee – we have not been able to work out how many there are. Perhaps a diligent reader would like to go through the list of Privy Council members and let us know how many have the requisite judicial qualifications. They certainly include all present and retired Lord Justices of Appeal in England – two of the latter, Sir Henry Brooke and Sir Jonathan Parker are sitting this term (although no Commonwealth judges).
Not surprisingly the site tells us nothing about the lively debate on the future of the Privy Council set in motion by Lord Phillips’ comments to the Financial Times. The debate can be followed here and here.
Thank you to the JCPC for getting this site up and running. We look forward to it coming into full operation in the not too distant future.
