in Camera Rule in UK Law

The whole subject with which the court was concerned was an arbitration which in itself was confidential. Indeed, such persons might be dissuaded from arbitration under the supervision of the English court. Each application, hearing and judgment, will be require to be examined by the court to ascertain whether or not a private or public hearing or a private or public judgment is appropriate in the light of the criteria to which I have already referred.

Whilst IIB and Bankers Trust could provide little evidence of actual detriment should the judgment be published, Moscow has provided equally no good reason for requiring publication either, since it can freely state the end result of the arbitration and the end result of the litigation. In many arbitrations the position may be different, but the terms of CPR 62.10, for the reasons given, provide a strong pointer to the way in which the courts should approach such matters.

If the way that courts behave cannot be hidden from the public ear and eye this provides a safeguard against judicial arbitrariness or idiosyncrasy and maintains the public confidence in the administration of justice.

However, since the purpose of the general rule is to serve the ends of justice it may be necessary to depart from it where the nature or circumstances of the particular proceeding are such that the application of the general rule in its entirety would frustrate or render impracticable the administration of justice or would damage some other public interest for whose protection parliament has made some statutory derogation from the rule.

After considerable reflection I have come to the conclusion that a court has no power to pronounce to the public at large such a prohibition against publication that all disobedience to it would automatically constitute a contempt.

If a court is satisfied that for the protection of the administration of justice from interference it is necessary to order that evidence either be heard in private or be written down and not given in open court, it may so order. Such an order, or ruling may be the foundation of contempt proceedings against any person who, with knowledge of the order, frustrates its purpose by publishing the evidence kept private or information leading to its exposure.

The presumption then is that the draftsman's mind was directed only to that genus and that he did not, by his addition of the word "other" to the list, intend to stray beyond its boundaries, but merely to bring within the ambit of the enacting words those species which complete the genus but have been omitted from the preceding list either inadvertently or in the interests of brevity.