Hong Kong courts lag behind in granting open access to legal documents
Granting open access to documents used in court is part of an international trend toward increasing transparency in legal proceedings, but not in Hong Kong
Hong Kong courts’ practice of withholding documents from the public and the media undermines open justice and falls far behind an international trend of making judicial documents accessible, a media scholar says.
Just a few types of court documents can be obtained by the Hong Kong public and journalists, a far cry from courts in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the US and Britain.
The practice also contrasts with a ground-breaking decision made by the UK’s Court of Appeal last year, which ruled that any documents referred to in open court in both civil and criminal cases should in general be supplied to the media in line with the open justice principle and decisions by other common law jurisdictions.
In Hong Kong, available documents include writs filed to initiate a suit and the court judgment but not other documents used in the proceedings.
Scholars and journalists say access to documents is now more important because litigation has become document-based and less intelligible as an unintended side effect of the civil justice reforms implemented in 2009 to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.
“The practice of lawyers to refer to documents without elaborating on them in open court puts journalists and the public at a disadvantage,” media law professor Doreen Weisenhaus said.