What crimes, if any, have been committed?

Dec 12, 2009 23:37

Lawyers: what are the chances of this working over here?

tl;dr: Prior to 2005, secret press injunctions (as seen in the recent Trafigura/Guardian mess) were common in Norway. Then the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) decided to ignore one and publish anyway. Their counsel argued that the injunction was in violation of ECHR Article 10 (freedom of expression) and (and this is the point where I get a bit lost) that the requirement to not publish until the injunction had been reviewed violated Article 13 (the right to an effective remedy for arguable claims of ECHR violations). Somewhat to their lawyer's surprise, this worked; better yet, the Supreme Court ruled that such injunctions are as a main rule incompatible with freedom of expression, and should only be envisaged in exceptional cases where for instance an individual's lives would be put at immediate risk and the state has no other feasible means of securing them. Secret gagging orders are now (apparently...) vanishingly rare in Norway.

law

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