Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: the competence of witnesses in civil and criminal cases; the compellability of witnesses, and of the accused and the spouse or civil partner in criminal cases in particular; sworn and unsworn evidence; privileges enjoyed by certain categories of witness, focusing upon the privilege against self-incrimination, and legal professional privilege (in the form of both legal advice privilege and litigation privilege); and public interest immunity.
Chapter
3. Witnesses: competence, compellability, and various privileges
Chapter
18. Public interest immunity and privilege I
Public interest immunity
This chapter first discusses the different rules governing public interest immunity and privilege, focusing on the waiver of the right to withhold and the use of secondary evidence if the original is immune from production and inadvertent disclosure. It then turns to public interest in both civil and criminal cases, covering applications to withhold material subject to public interest immunity; ‘affairs of state’ cases; whether the court can question the claim to withhold and by what criteria the claim to withhold should be judged; closed material procedures; the use of methods such as redaction to minimise the effect of a refusal to disclose documents; information given for the detection of crime, etc.; and confidentiality.
Chapter
10. Privilege and public policy
The Concentrate Questions and Answers series offers the best preparation for tackling exam questions. Each book includes typical questions, bullet-pointed answer plans and suggested answers, author commentary and diagrams and flow charts. This chapter covers evidence excluded for policy or public interest considerations: public interest immunity (PII). A party, witness or non-participant in proceedings may refuse to disclose information, papers or answer questions, even though such material may be highly relevant and reliable. If PII applies, neither party has access to the evidence. For privilege, the areas most likely to occur in Evidence courses are privilege against self-incrimination and legal professional privilege. The former includes the right to silence of the defendant. The privilege against self-incrimination is generally upheld by common law and by implication by Art. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Legal professional privilege is a common law exclusionary rule principle that applies in civil and criminal proceedings.
Chapter
21. Public policy
The public interest in efficient and fair trials may be seen as underlying the rules of disclosure in civil litigation, whereby a litigant is obliged to make pre-trial disclosure of the documents on which he relies and the documents that adversely affect his own case or adversely affect, or support, another party’s case, even though such documents may not be admissible evidence at the trial. There is also a public interest in enabling material to be withheld where its production would harm the nation or the public service. Where these two kinds of public interest clash and the latter prevails over the former, relevant and otherwise admissible evidence is excluded at trial. Such material is said to be withheld by reason of ‘public interest immunity’. This chapter discusses the development of the modern law on public interest immunity; the scope of exclusion on grounds of public policy; and related procedural issues in civil and criminal cases.
Chapter
8. Public Interest Immunity and Related Matters
Chapter 8 examines the doctrine of public interest immunity. It discusses the development of the law; ‘class’ claims and ‘contents’ claims; national security and analogous concerns; proper functioning of the public service; the two main contexts in which public interest immunity disputes in criminal cases have arisen—the disclosure of the identity of police informers, and the disclosure of the location of police observation points; how the doctrine of public interest immunity stands alongside, and probably overlaps with, the operations of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, which governs the disclosure of sources of information contained in publications.
Chapter
21. Public policy
The public interest in efficient and fair trials may be seen as underlying the rules of disclosure in civil litigation, whereby a litigant is obliged to make pre-trial disclosure of the documents on which he relies and the documents that adversely affect his own case or adversely affect, or support, another party’s case, even though such documents may not be admissible evidence at the trial. There is also a public interest in enabling material to be withheld where its production would harm the nation or the public service. Where these two kinds of public interest clash and the latter prevails over the former, relevant and otherwise admissible evidence is excluded at trial. Such material is said to be withheld by reason of ‘public interest immunity’. This chapter discusses the development of the modern law on public interest immunity; the scope of exclusion on grounds of public policy; and related procedural issues in civil and criminal cases.
