Evidence, practice and procedure: Inquisitorial (non-adversarial) v Adversarial

Spare a thought for the front-line circuit or district judge who is told often enough by the Court of Appeal that family proceedings are non-adversarial; and then is criticised by the same Court of Appeal as ‘absurd'. Indeed the non-adversarial line was promoted by the House of Lords (by a majority of three-to-two) in Re L (Police Investigation: Privilege) [1997] AC 16 [1996] 1 FLR 731: because care proceedings were ‘non-adversarial' litigation privilege could not apply to them. This proposition as to the adversarial nature of family proceedings has - as a matter of fact - been frequently overridden since. In Piglowska v Piglowski [1999] 2 FLR 763 and in Re B (Children) [2008] UKHL 35 [2009] 1 AC 11 Lord Hoffman explained ancillary relief and children proceedings in terms redolent of adversarial procedures.

In Edgerton v Edgerton and Shaikh [2012] EWCA Civ 181 [2012] 2...

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