‘Courts are to administer
justice, not manage how
or by what medium’

OPINION

DANIEL
BURNETT

With courts in several provinces considering “Twitter” policies, as well as some recent commentary in The Lawyers Weekly, it’s time to zero in on the key considerations.

As a starting point, let’s be clear on the question: It is not whether there will be tweets about what goes on in court. The question is simply whether those wishing to tweet can do so from the court gallery.

Those describing tweets as “crap” and “trivial,” (to quote the anonymous judge in the February 17 issue) are welcome to their view, but that has no place in a court policy discussion. The policy cannot and should not control whether there will or will not be Twitter reporting of courts.

Some may think radio
reporting, where stories are often
squeezed into 30-second seg-
ments, are too brief to properly
inform the public. Yet, nobody
would seriously suggest out-
lawing radio reports.

should be treated differently as a
matter of principle.”
That said, I still encourage
those in the “crap/trivial” camp
to take a second look. Sure, there
are plenty of silly tweets — like all
things, it depends on the source.
The Chief Justice of the British
Supreme Court has a Twitter
feed, as do many other promin-
ent jurists and professors.

It is also vital to understand the technology. When it comes to live reporting on a hearing or a conference, a Twitter “feed,” often under a hashtag such as #Rafferty, can collectively be an impressive account of a proceeding. Individual tweets may be limited in length, but a collection of messages by various contributors can add up to a

IRIE JAH / DREAMSTIME.COM

remarkably complete contemporaneous description that is well worth reading.

I was in an appeal in Ottawa covered by national media last year, and the Twitter feed of the hearing was without question the most complete and accurate report I read, right down to the specific questions judges asked and the answers given by counsel.

Another point of view quoted
in one of the recent Lawyers
Weekly articles was from an
Ontario judicial discussion paper,
where one judge said: “Given that
the current system works so well
to fully inform the public, is twit-
tering really worth the many risks
that it presents?”
Let’s examine that more
closely. Are the “many risks”
from the tweets themselves, or is
there something about tweeting
from the court gallery that cre-
ates a risk? As to the tweets
themselves, no policy will stop
them; the only question is
whether people have to leave the
courtroom to do so, creating a
risk the other way, that they will
miss key evidence.