Roundtable between the Commercial Court and the Italian Supreme Court

Judges from the Commercial Court have discussed their experiences of working online with a delegation from the Italian Supreme Court.

Their virtual roundtable event was part of a series of meetings between the England and Wales judiciary and their counterparts in Europe.

They discussed and shared best practice about their responses to COVID-19, while also ensuring that good routes of communication are maintained now that the UK has transitioned to a new relationship with the EU.

At the roundtable, held on 26 January, Mr Justice Simon Picken (Judge responsible for European relations) and Mrs Justice Cockerill (Judge in charge of the Commercial Court) talked with Valeria Piccone, Judge at the Supreme Court (Corte di cassazione), Luigi Marini, Secretary General of the Supreme Court, and Filippo Donati, President of the European Network of the Councils for the Judiciary.

Afterwards, Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Cockerill said it had been a friendly and constructive conversation. They’d shared their experience of addressing the reluctance of legal practitioners to move to remote hearings, and the potential challenges to privacy and a respectful court process that can arise in a new era of live-streaming. There were useful lessons to be learnt from the experiences and approaches from both jurisdictions.

The judges are already planning their next online meeting and hope they can continue the conversation in person at the next conference for COMBAR, the specialist association of the English and Welsh Bar for commercial barristers advising the international business community.