Super-injunctions prohibit the media from publishing any details in relation to the parties who sought the injunction and the reasons for which it was sought.

They are often commented on by users online who see them as a means of celebrities protecting themselves from scandal.

However, what are they really and do they in fact work in the modern-day era of the internet?

A super-injunction is defined as “an interim injunction which restrains a person from (i) publishing information which concerns the applicant and which is said to be confidential or private and (ii) publicising or informing others of the existence of the order and the proceedings”.

There is much confusion over the types of injunctions available to Claimants in privacy cases.

The three main forms of injunction:

  • Traditional injunction – naming the parties but preventing publication of the underlying facts.
  • Anonymised injunction – This is the more common form of injunction which permits publication of the existence of the injunction but not the names of the parties.
  • Super-injunction – this is a beefed-up version of the anonymised injunction. It is rare and states that even the existence of the injunction cannot be published.

Do they work?

Perhaps most famously, the disgraced former Manchester United footballer and Wales manager Ryan Giggs sought an injunction to protect his identity over an alleged affair with a reality TV contestant, only to have his name mentioned in connection with the matter by Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming.

In May 2011, Hemming was able to reveal Giggs' name in the House of Commons under the protection of parliamentary privilege.

Mr Hemming was addressing the problem of Twitter users breaking the terms of the injunction - something that has since become increasingly common.

“Mr Speaker, with about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs it is obviously impracticable to imprison them all,” he said, in what was regarded as a controversial application of ministerial privilege.

Prime Minister at the time David Cameron said: “It is rather unsustainable, this situation, where newspapers can’t print something that clearly everybody else is talking about…”

While the Giggs case did not involve a super-injunction - and so was not exempt from being reported altogether – a story that was and which was subsequently brought to light, concerned TV presenter Andrew Marr.

The former BBC political editor and Independent editor applied for the protection in 2008 to conceal an extramarital affair before revealing its existence to The Daily Mail himself in a 2011 interview.

“I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists,” he said. ”I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else’s business.”

He was nevertheless criticised for seeking the super-injunction in the first place by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, who argued: “As a leading BBC interviewer who is asking politicians about failures in judgment, failures in their private lives, inconsistencies, it was pretty rank of him to have an injunction while working as an active journalist.”