The highest court in the United Kingdom has joined Twitter.
Tweeting as @UKSupremeCourt, the account already has more than 4,300 followers after posting just eight tweets.
The first tweet, posted Monday, points to the court’s Twitter policy, which promises two to three tweets a week consisting of case coverage, judgments, and Supreme Court announcements. It also states that the account won’t automatically follow back people who follow it, instead following accounts that pertain to relevant legal issues.
Also, tweeting at the account won’t garner you any legal advice, the policy warns. Email is a better alternative of communication if you want to get in contact with the court.
The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, modeled after the United States’ highest legal authority, is a relatively recent creation in British governance. It replaced the Law Lords, a committee of members of Parliament’s House of Lords, which had served as the country’s highest court of appeals since the late 19th century. (As far as we can tell, they never had a Twitter account.)
In 2011, the Supreme Court allowed people to tweet from the court’s chambers.
Stateside, there is no official United States Supreme Court Twitter account, rather a smattering of unofficial Twitter accounts tweeting out court rulings, and fan accounts devoted to individual justices like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Photo by David Holt
