Open justice depends on more than access; it depends on comprehension.  Courts do not merely decide disputes. They create the public record of how power is used, how conflict is resolved, and how the State justifies coercion in the name of law.  That is why the court file matters.

A court file is not just a bundle of pleadings, affidavits, submissions, exhibits, minutes, and judgments. It is a civic memory system. It records what was alleged, what was denied, what evidence was produced, what arguments were made, what the court accepted, and what the court rejected.  In theory, that record belongs to the public.

In practice, much of it is barely intelligible to anyone outside the legal system.  That is a problem for open justice.

Open Justice is Not Satisfied by Unlocked Doors

The old idea of open justice is simple: courts should not operate in secret. Hearings should be public. Judgments should be available. The press should be able to report. The public should be able to see what is being done in its name.  That principle is essential. Secret courts are dangerous courts.

But there is a weaker version of open justice that treats access as enough. Under that view, justice is “open” because a member of the public could, in theory, attend the hearing, request a file, or read the decision.  That is not enough.

A court process can be technically public while still being practically opaque. If the file is inaccessible, disordered, expensive to obtain, difficult to search, written in language nobody understands, or stripped of the context necessary to make sense of it, then the public has not truly been given access to justice.  It has been given access to paper.

Open justice requires more than visibility. It requires intelligibility.

The Court File Tells the Story Behind the Judgment

Judgments matter, but they are not the whole story.  A judgment is the court’s final account of the dispute. It is usually disciplined, compressed, and selective. It identifies the issues the court considered legally relevant. It explains the reasoning. It records the outcome.  But the court file often tells us something broader.

It shows how the dispute was framed before the court refined it. It reveals what parties thought mattered. It may show procedural delays, abandoned claims, evidential gaps, settlement pressure, tactical choices, interlocutory skirmishes, and the slow narrowing of a human conflict into legal questions.

That broader record matters because law is not only found in final decisions. It is found in process.

A clean judgment may sit on top of a messy file. A narrow ruling may emerge from a much wider injustice. A party may “lose” because their evidence was weak, because they misunderstood the procedure, because they could not afford representation, because they missed a deadline, or because the law simply did not recognise the wrong they suffered.  Without the file, the public sees only the polished surface.

Public Memory Guards Against Institutional Amnesia

Court files also protect society against forgetting.  Government departments forget. Police forget. Employers forget. Landlords forget. Corporations forget. Institutions often develop a convenient form of memory: they remember what protects them and misplace what embarrasses them.  A court file is supposed to resist that.

It fixes events into a record that can be returned to later. It allows future lawyers, journalists, researchers, litigants, judges, and citizens to ask: what actually happened here? What did the evidence show? How did the institution respond? Was this an isolated incident or part of a pattern?

That function is especially important where there is a power imbalance.  For the powerful, a dispute is often a file among many. For the individual, it may be the defining legal event of their life. If the public record is weak, scattered, or incomprehensible, the larger pattern disappears. Each person is left fighting as if they are the first.

Public memory prevents that isolation.  It allows one case to speak to another.

But Comprehension is Now the Weak Point

Modern court systems are producing more information than ever, but not necessarily more understanding.  Digital filing has improved storage, speed, and distribution. But digital access does not automatically make a file comprehensible. A badly organised electronic file is still a badly organised file. A searchable mess is still a mess. For ordinary people, the barriers are obvious.

They may not know which documents matter. They may not understand the difference between pleadings, evidence, submissions, interlocutory applications, and final orders. They may not know whether an allegation was proved, withdrawn, ignored, or simply irrelevant. They may not know that a dramatic claim in a statement of claim is not a finding of fact.

That last point matters.

Public access without public understanding can mislead. A person reading a court file may mistake allegations for proof. They may treat procedural outcomes as moral vindication. They may misunderstand suppression orders, confidentiality, privilege, settlement, or admissibility.  So the answer is not simply “publish everything.”

The answer is to make the public record more usable, more responsible, and more comprehensible.

The Justice System Needs Better Public-Facing Records

There is a gap between the court file as a legal instrument and the court file as a public record.

Lawyers need the technical file. Judges need the complete procedural history. Parties need the documents that define their rights and obligations.  But the public needs orientation.

That does not mean simplifying the law into slogans. It means building systems that help people understand what they are looking at.  A useful public-facing court record would make clear:

• what stage the case reached;

• what issues were actually decided;

• what allegations were made but not determined;

• what evidence the court relied on;

• what orders were made;

• whether the matter settled, discontinued, or proceeded to judgment;

• whether any information is suppressed or confidential;

• and how the decision fits within the wider legal framework.

That kind of structure would not weaken legal accuracy. It would strengthen it.  Because the public should not have to decode the legal system before it can scrutinise it.

The File is Also a Discipline on Power

The existence of a proper record changes behaviour.  When parties know their conduct may become part of a court file, they behave differently. When public agencies know their decisions may later be examined, they are more careful. When lawyers know procedural tactics can be reconstructed, they are less free to hide behind fog.  

A good file disciplines everyone.  It disciplines the parties by making their claims accountable to evidence. It disciplines the court by requiring reasons. It disciplines the State by preserving a record of coercive power. It disciplines the media by giving reporters something better than rumour. It disciplines the public by separating allegation from finding.  That is why the degradation of public records should worry us.

If justice becomes visible only through press releases, headlines, selective leaks, or isolated judgments, the public memory becomes dangerously thin. We remember outcomes without process. We remember accusations without context. We remember scandal without structure.

That is not open justice. That is theatre.

Privacy Still Matters

None of this means every document should be thrown open without restraint.  Court files often contain intensely private material: medical records, financial information, children’s details, employment records, family violence allegations, commercially sensitive material, and the names of people who have not been convicted of anything.

Open justice must be balanced against privacy, safety, fair trial rights, and the dignity of people dragged into litigation.

But privacy should not be used as a lazy excuse for opacity.  The serious work is in distinction: what should be public, what should be withheld, what should be anonymised, and what should be explained.

A mature justice system does not choose between secrecy and exposure. It builds rules that preserve public accountability while protecting legitimate private interests.

Open Justice Must be Designed

The public record of the courts should not depend on accident.  It should not depend on whether a journalist happened to be present, whether a party could afford transcripts, whether a registry officer interpreted access rules generously, or whether a judgment was written in a way that non-lawyers can follow.  Open justice has to be designed into the system.

That means better digital access. Better indexing. Better explanations. Better distinction between allegations and findings. Better public summaries. Better preservation of documents that matter. Better protection for material that should not be exposed.

It also means taking the court file seriously as a democratic object.  Not merely as a case-management tool.  Not merely as a technical archive.  But as public memory.

The Final Point

A society that cannot understand its court records cannot properly understand its justice system.

And a society that cannot understand its justice system cannot properly supervise power.

The court file is where law leaves its footprint. It is where private conflict becomes public process. It is where the State records why it acted, why it refused to act, or why it allowed one party to prevail over another.  So yes, the file should be accessible.

But more than that, it should be comprehensible.

Because open justice is not achieved when the public is allowed to look through a window.  It is achieved when the public can understand what it sees.