In the increasingly heated debate about the state of English privacy law, the courts have frequently been accused of seeking to introduce a privacy law ‘by the back door’. The decision in CTB v News Group Newspapers [2011] contains a robust judicial response to that criticism.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Eady – the judge who has so far borne the brunt of the media’s ire – tackles head on the suggestion that the judges are overriding the democratic process by unilaterally creating a new privacy law. The judgment also touches on another important and controversial issue, namely the circumstances in which an injunction should be refused or restricted on the basis that the private material has already entered the public domain.
