Open justice, whereby the administration of justice is open to scrutiny by the press and the public, is an essential principle of democratic society, according to the British Lord Chancellor.
Lord Irvine was last night giving a lecture on "Broadcasting, Society and the Law", the fourth in a series of annual lectures jointly sponsored by UCD's Faculty of Law and RTE.
The three principles of judicial independence, judicial impartiality and open justice were closely intertwined, he said.
The former was a critical aspect of Britain's unwritten constitution, which guaranteed that the judiciary was free of executive influence or control.
"Judicial impartiality is the quid pro quo for judicial independence," he said. "Open justice is a strong spur to judicial impartiality."
In a speech which drew as freely on Irish as on British law and legal precedent, the Lord Chancellor cited the recent judgment in Murphy v The Irish Times, in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of the media to report on court proceedings. Such a right was enshrined in the Irish Constitution, he said.
The same principles were stressed by Lord Diplock in England in 1979, Lord Irvine pointed out, when he said that conducting legal proceedings in public provided a safeguard against judicial arbitrariness or idiosyncrasy.
This principle had recently been extended to hearings in chambers, normally not amenable to public access, where the Court of Appeal had ruled there should be access for the press to the extent practicable.
English case law since 1981 had repeatedly favoured open reporting, and this was likely to be enshrined in legislation when the Human Rights Act became operational.
He pointed out that similar principles had been consistently upheld by the European Court, citing the Spycatcher case, which challenged a British prohibition on the publication of a book on the British secret service.
"It remains to be seen if the degree of press freedom which prevails in the US will ever operate here. European countries have never gone that far," he said, referring to the upholding of the right of the Los Angeles Times to comment on a case while it was going on.
Lord Irvine examined the circumstances in which court proceedings were held in private, pointing out that they were roughly similar in Ireland, Britain and the EU. These related to issues such as national security, confidential commercial information, where it was required in the interests of justice, notably to protect vulnerable witnesses, and in family cases. Earlier, the Lord Chancellor paid tribute to UCD's Law Faculty, saying it had educated most of those who made up the Irish judiciary since Independence. He paid particular tribute to the late Mr Justice Brian Walsh, who served on the Court of Human Rights. "We learned, sometimes to our cost, how exacting he was," he said.