The UK Supreme Court has become the first court with Scottish jurisdiction to publish a policy on the use of Twitter.

The document sets out how the court will engage via Twitter, who will operate it on behalf of the Court, and encourages direct contact via direct replies to its address (@UKSupremecourt).

The publication comes on the day Lord Reed is scheduled to be sworn in as successor to Lord Rodger, an event which the court advises will be tweeted out as it happens.

In December the Scottish courts announced that “full consideration” was being given to permitting the use of twitter within court by those attending. The Supreme Court policy does not relate to the use of the medium by court attendees.

“While we would welcome feedback from followers and will read all @replies, we will not always be able to reply individually to all the messages we receive via Twitter, because of resource constraints,” the policy states.

“@UKSupremecourt will follow organisations of relevance to it and may follow individuals where appropriate. We will cease to follow accounts we believe are malicious or spam,” it adds.

The policy can be read here.

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