Evidence, Practice and Procedure: Rule of children law, and of control in children proceedings

I attended court recently as little more than an observer of the end of a mother's unsuccessful application to remove the parties' children from the jurisdiction. The judge had already handed down a judgement which disposed of the mother's application. You might think that would be the end of it all. But no. The judge then allowed the father - after the case was all over - to make a series of applications to the court. The applications were not on notice the mother had no idea what cases she was meeting. It was all as far as I could tell sort of tacked on at the end of the permission to remove proceedings. And another whole day was permitted in court.

The impression I had was of two things: the process was only tangentially related to legal principle (and therefore unlawful); and the male judge had little concept...

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