Dear Andrew, this is the Court of Appeal

Dear Andrew,

This is the Court of Appeal. We are writing to you in light of your touching and warm-hearted judgment recording the resolution of an appeal about care arrangements, in the form of a letter to young Claude. 

Please don’t.

Judgments need to be understood by their readers. In a case about care arrangements there is probably no more important reader than the child or young person involved. But it also the case that judgments demand precision of language and, by their nature, resolve and record complicated concepts. It is the formal resolution that the parties need, and the system requires. Departure from that mode risks imprecision and imprecision risks error and appeal, to the detriment of the system, the parties, and the child or young person involved.

Or, put another way, the senior courts issue summaries of judgments to assist in public understanding. So why can’t the summary just be the judgment itself? Because the formal site of the exercise of public power brings with it complexity and formality, no matter how much we might wish it to be otherwise. 

We know that context matters, and that your letter recorded an agreed position reached in court, rather than formally adjudicating an active dispute. We have no doubt that you picked your moment and that had the matter been bitterly contested you would not have jeopardised Claude’s interests by failing to issue a judgment in more formal terms. But the thing is, allowing letters as judgments is going to encourage some other judge somewhere to release a judgment in the form of a poem. We know our colleagues. Some of them are just itching to do that. We already have to put up with occasional secret messages in judgments, or the comedy stylings of Hammond J. Then it will be blank verse. After that, it’s not going to be long before this Court is having to issue judgments explaining why the Family Court at Masterton was wrong to determine shared day-to-day care arrangements by means of a mime performance scored to the Netherworld Dancing Toys.

So, while the LinkedIn set have enjoyed the letter and hold it up (correctly) as an example of a good judge doing a good thing, they will also realise that it is tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is nice when it accompanies a proper meal. But no one wants a plate of tomato sauce.

If you really have to, put it an appendix next time.

Lastly, we don’t watch much league here in the Court of Appeal, but if you had any thoughts on La Dorada’s run at Karaka then we’d be happy to receive your ranking out of ten. 

Warm regards,

The Court of Appeal