The naming of Goodwin and Giggs is on a different plane from ministerial briefings against judges, inappropriate as these are, because it disrupts the historic equilibrium between the judiciary and the legislature. The media may present themselves as amused spectators, but it is they who have provoked and exploited the breakdown of an element in the democracy they themselves inhabit.
I quoted Sedley's concluding paragraph from his LRB piece in a blog post too http://markpinder.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/the-lrb-on-the-ryan-giggs-affair/ Whilst I agree broadly with the sentiment, I come to a slightly different analysis based on the unmediated world of the internet not being factored into the conclusion. It was not, ultimately, the press that made a mockery of the law, but the nature of the world wide web, and the speed that information from largely unattributable sources can be disseminated globally very very quickly making mockeries of not just the judiciary and parliament, but the fourth estate too.
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