Cases and Administration
In July 2006, Sir Mark ruled against Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, a lesbian couple who had wed in Canada, in their case to have their same-sex partnership recognised as marriage under English law.
Sir Mark held that, in withholding from same-sex partnerships the title and status of marriage, Parliament had not interfered with or failed to recognise the right of same-sex couples to respect for their private or family life; nor had it discriminated against same-sex couples in declining to alter the deep-rooted and almost universal recognition of marriage as a union between a man and woman. Sir Mark granted the couple leave to appeal; but no appeal was brought.
In 2009, following a government consultation on increasing transparency in the family courts system, Sir Mark presided over the implementation of new rules allowing media access to family proceedings, hitherto private and confidential, subject to certain restrictions.
Read more about this topic: Mark Potter (judge)
Famous quotes containing the word cases:
“In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it.... Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty—he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world—alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)