Human remains interred in parish churchyards or in consecrated portions of local authority cemeteries are within the faculty jurisdiction of the consistory courts of the Church of England. A faculty is required for the disturbance of human remains lying within the faculty jurisdiction. This article will examine the law surrounding consecrated burial grounds in England and the disinterment of human

In 2008 and 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published two responses to questions posed regarding the validity of modified baptismal formulas. When administering baptism, some Catholic ministers had altered the prescribed formula with regard to the naming of the Trinity and with regard to the declarative introduction of the formula (ie ‘We baptise you …’ instead of ‘I baptise you

Habits and institutions gradually emerged in earliest Christianity. They were soon enrolled in the Roman empire and subsequently into various forms of Christendom. The English Christendom lasted many centuries and in the period of empire planted the Anglican Church in Australia. This Christendom model was fractured decisively in New South Wales in the first half of the nineteenth century. The recent

The Church of England has committed itself to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. An important element required for success in this aim will be to amend the legislation around the management of church buildings and in particular the operation of the faculty jurisdiction. While aspects of the present system can and do facilitate some necessary change, to achieve the swift and widespread changes

The historical evolution of tribunals in South Africa is important in understanding the stratagem of present-day tribunals. This article attempts to take the reader on a journey from before colonisation to during and after that era. The aim is to address the historical journey of tribunals from a South African perspective, and to analyse Church tribunals regarding their functions, characteristics and

Considering the importance of their role in the life of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, there is not much written about the role of archdeacons. In her recent article in the January 2019 issue of this Journal, Jane Steen focused on the legal aspect of the role of archdeacons, and reflected on how they play a key role in shaping the Church and its ministry, delighting in its beauty and

During the COVID-19 lockdown the initial British Government mantra of ‘Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives’, the ritualistic weekly public clapping for the NHS and the overall tone of the media coverage led several commentators to raise the question of whether the NHS had become a religion. This question is legally significant. English law provides the right to manifest religion or belief under

The seal of the confessional is often described as ‘inviolable’. The idea that what is said or done in furtherance of private confession may be subjected to scrutiny as part of litigation is often considered to be absurd. But what is the legal basis for such forthright rejection? The revised Canons of the Church of England do not address the issue at all; instead the matter falls to be covered by the

Mr G Conisbee v Crossley Farms Ltd & Ors [2019] ET 3335357/2018 was a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not vegetarianism was ‘capable of satisfying the requirement and definition of being a philosophical belief (protected characteristic) under the Equality Act 2010’. Employment Judge Postle held that vegetarianism did not amount to a philosophical belief, comparing it to veganism. It is

This article examines how Lord Coleridge's Victorian experiences and Christian mindset played a prominent and persuasive role in the formulation of his judgment in R v Dudley and Stephens. Notwithstanding efforts to act impartially and objectively, we are all beholden, often unconsciously, to the biases and beliefs permeating the society in which we live. Coleridge was no exception, being a composite

Liberal modernity and its associated individualism have created conditions in which a case for an established Church appears to contradict all the principles of social diversity. But the characteristic mechanisms of liberal modernity for managing difference – the ballot and the market – have proved inadequate to prevent social divisions from deepening, as the national argument about Brexit demonstrates

The process of Church–State separation began 90 years before the 1919 Enabling Act, which gave the Church Assembly legislative powers. The Assembly was conceived not by William Temple’s Life and Liberty movement but by aristocratic Conservative politicians, motivated by practical efficiency and High Church principles. With Church lawyers, they dominated it for 40 years. The Church’s response to Parliament’s

This article focuses on the role of private patronage within the Church of England. Private patrons own advowsons. These property rights can no longer be traded but may still be bequeathed or transferred without value. When there is a vacancy in a benefice a patron has the right to nominate a new incumbent in accordance with the Patronage (Benefices) Measure 1986. This article uses contemporary and

This review will be published in a revised form in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal]. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works.

The Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man is an important member of the Legislative Council, the second chamber of the Manx Tynwald. The shape of Tynwald has changed considerably since the mid-nineteenth century, and there have been frequent reviews of the place of ecclesiastical officers in it. The most recent debates illuminate this form of religious representation, but in particular show the importance of

HM Land Registry has published an updated Practice Guide on the property aspects of converting a charitable trust into a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (‘CIO’). Church of England parishes cannot convert themselves into CIOs, but congregations in some smaller denominations have either done so already or are contemplating conversion.

Some scholars, faced with the apparent conflict between the Church of England’s teaching on marriage and the idea of equal marriage embraced by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, have focussed on the implications of that Act for the constitutional relationship between church, state and nation. More frequently, academics have, noting the position of the Church of England under that Act, critiqued

This study traces the way in which a typical Elizabethan Reformed Protestant became something slightly different during a ministerial career prematurely terminated by death in his forties, and what he became in the centuries that followed. It explains the background of divided theologies in the national Church of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the emergence of ‘avant-garde conformism’, and the way

On 22 January 2019, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe agreed the text of Resolution 2253: Sharia, the Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights. This expresses concern about ‘the “judicial” activities of “Sharia Councils” in the United Kingdom. This article explores whether these concerns correctly identify the problem and whether the proposals mandated in the

Members of the Church of England are part of an ordered Church with a given liturgy. That order is deeply embedded in our story and today all clergy and lay ministers function and carry out their ministries on the authorisation of the bishop of the diocese. The Church of England is an institution which has its rules, laws and codes of conduct. Because we have no doctrinal formulations of our own, the

This journal has published two distinguished series on the lives and careers of individual jurists in the history of English church law, from the mediaeval period to the late nineteenth century: one by Professor Sir John Baker on ‘famous English canonists’ (1988–1997); and the other by Professor Richard Helmholz on ‘notable ecclesiastical lawyers’ (2013–2017). Most prepared for their professional careers

The African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS) has come a long way – literally and metaphorically – since its establishment in Ghana in 2013 for an inaugural symposium under the leadership of Professor Kofi Quashigah, then Dean of the Law School at the University of Accra. It subsequently reconvened in South Africa (2014), Namibia (2015), Ethiopia (2016) and Morocco (2017). The proceedings

This is a brief report on an international conference on the contested place of religious freedom in the United States and the United Kingdom, offering legal, historical, and comparative perspectives.

Hate preaching is capable of constituting both hate crime and hate speech, lies at the centre of many religions’ understanding of the manifestation of their religion, and frequently raises the contentious issue of regulation of the use of sacred scriptures. This brief article explores the regulation of hate preaching by criminal law, discussing the particular problems posed by oppositional religious

In recent years, those involved in regulating, forming or advising faith communities have had much to contend with: the expansion of the vicarious liability doctrine, the status of ministers of religion and the decision in Shergill v Khaira, not to mention the General Data Protection Regulation. These issues share a common denominator: they require faith communities to give close consideration to the

An ecumenical group of experts in church law produced a Statement of Principles of Christian Law based on a comparative examination of the internal regulations of their respective churches. This article examines the detail of the Statement from the point of view of the regulations and practice of Quakers in Britain and concludes that, based as it is on a Trinitarian, sacramental view of ‘the Church’

This comment is based on two recently published reports from the Constitution Unit, University College London, prepared by Professor Robert Hazell and the writer. This work followed a 2016 study ‘The Queen at ninety: the changing role of the monarchy, and future challenges’, which charted the further decline of the sovereign’s personal constitutional powers and analysed the remaining functions. While

This article compares the use of the term ‘pastoral’ in the canon law of the Western Latin Church as it occurred in the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law and then in the revised Code of 1983. This is because the revised Code increased the use of the term ‘pastoral’ and I wish to see if its meaning had changed and, if so, in what way. Hence, the article considers how ‘pastoral’ occurred in the

This article provides a general account of the universal law of sanctions in the Roman Catholic Church. The crisis of the Catholic Church caused by clergy sexual abuse of minors has revealed, among other things, the widespread well-intentioned but naive inclination to resort to penal law as opposed to any theology of mercy and forgiveness. Although the author argues that penal law has a proper place

There is no universal definition of religion under English law. Instead, different definitions have been developed by courts and tribunals in relation to different religious rights. Although there have been moves towards the harmonisation of these different definitions, recent decisions have reversed this trend. This article explores for the first time how this has led to a confused and contradictory

This article examines the Church of England's stewardship of its silver plate. It explains the way in which the use of chalices, patens and flagons changed over time and considers the legal basis on which church plate is held by churchwardens. It explains how, having initially discountenanced all sales of redundant church plate, consistory courts came to authorise sales to museums. It also explains

The fact that the criminal law in England and Wales continues to afford protection to spouses who conspire together to commit crime is considered by many to be an anachronism. That a person cannot be guilty of conspiracy if the only other person with whom he or she agrees is his or her spouse, is to be found in section 2 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. The origins of the rule are said to be based on

In 2010 the chancellor gave judgment on a petition for the re-ordering of the church. Major aspects of the proposals were permitted and a faculty was issued but certain aspects, including the proposed removal of the pulpit, were refused. There was no appeal against that judgment. In 2012 the pulpit was removed from the church and placed in storage. In 2015 the petitioners applied for the 2010 faculty

The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the church, but also law and the state. Despite Luther’s burning of the canon law books and his berating of lawyers as bad Christians, he soon realized that he needed both law and the legal profession to preserve his theological reforms, and to extend them into the realms of marriage, education, social welfare and more. Luther and his colleagues

A marriage in the Church of England or the Church in Wales may take place following the publication of banns of marriage (preferably during morning service) on three Sundays, by special licence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, by common licence or on the authority of a certificate issued by a superintendent registrar. Reports of the death of the church wedding have been somewhat exaggerated: in 2014

The concept of dignity has made its way into contemporary discourse on rights after having taken a winding road which intersected secular thinking with religious thinking. Its pervasive utilisation by courts shows its richness as well as its amorphousness. An enquiry into comparative law suggests that the concept of dignity, especially when it is associated with the idea of equality, creates tensions

The oath taken by British sovereigns at their coronations is laid down by a statute dating from 1688. Any oath taken other than in accordance with the correct statutory form is contrary to law. Taking the authorised form of the oath is a condition on which the crown is held by any individual. The oath taken by the present sovereign omitted the promise to govern according to the statutes agreed upon

Recent reforms to English and Scots marriage law faced the United Reformed Church (URC) with two challenges. Its hybrid structure of church government, entwining Congregational and Presbyterian strands, complicated application of the statutory criterion ‘persons recognised by [the membership] as competent for the purpose of giving consent’. Precedent from earlier decisions on human sexuality explains

As Martin Heale states at the very beginning of The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England, ‘the importance of the late medieval abbot needs no particular emphasis’. This was a group of men with responsibility for the spiritual and material wellbeing of thousands of monks and canons. Their influence extended far beyond the cloister, since they were also prominent figures in local

Society has historically viewed suicide with hostility and fear. For centuries this hostility was reflected in the English civil law, which condemned suicide as homicide, and in the Church's position towards suicide victims, which historically considered suicide to be a mortal sin. Under the current canon law, set out in Canon B 38, it is the duty of the minister to bury all parishioners, those who

‘The manner of appointment [of bishops] reflects the delicate balance between the established nature of the Church of England and its autonomous self-governance.’ As with most matters of Church of England ecclesiology and polity, the process of the appointment of bishops in the Church of England is firmly rooted within the reforms of the sixteenth century, but has origins which stretch back to the

A panel of experts has produced a Statement of Principles of Christian Law, drawn from an examination of their internal regulatory instruments. These principles are offered for further examination by comparative scholars of church law, as an expression of shared ecclesiology, and in furtherance of the ecumenical endeavour.

I should make plain at the beginning that I am neither a theologian nor a church historian, and I do not represent the Catholic Church. What follows is merely my understanding of the key documents and some of the key interventions by the Church on the topic of religious freedom over the last fifty years. In writing this comment, I have used a collection of the Church's statements on religious freedom

The theme of the Ecclesiastical Law Society's 2016 Day Conference, ‘Freedom of/from religion’, reflects the growing interest in the idea that, in addition to a right to freedom of religion, there is a right to ‘freedom from’ religion. In recent years, there has been a trend towards increased use of the language of freedom from religion in academic literature and in material produced by practitioners

While the English Church shared in celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, not least its own part in gaining those rights for everyone, the Church of England was reversing the principle that people are innocent until proved guilty. Such is the pressure of today's concern about child abuse, historic and present. As evidence mounts of the injustices done by false accusations against some high-profile

High-profile cases in the Supreme Court of the United States (‘SCOTUS’) on religion tend to attract a certain amount of academic comment in the United Kingdom but US judgments are cited only infrequently by the superior courts in the UK. In return, SCOTUS rarely cites foreign judgments at all. The reason, it is suggested, is that the effect given by the First Amendment to the US Constitution is to

This article identifies the liberties of the Church and the City of London which were intended to be protected by Magna Carta from 1215. The liberties intended were a recognition of a form of autonomy for the Church and the City and have no connection with the individual freedoms that are identified for protection by modern human rights instruments. The clauses in Magna Carta conferring that autonomy

On 9 May, the EU Justice Sub-Committee of the House of Lords, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, published a report on the Government's proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new Bill of Rights – and suggested that there was a forceful case for a Government rethink: The proposals the Secretary of State outlined did not appear to depart significantly from the Human Rights

Concerns about legal pluralism, the co-existence of more than one legal system within a state, have become pronounced in recent years, owing to fears about the operation of sharia law in Western societies. At the same time, the concept of legal pluralism has become ubiquitous within legal literature. Paradoxically, the concept is both politically controversial and academically banal. This article contends

The Ecclesiastical Law Society (ELS) is a charity whose object is ‘to promote education in ecclesiastical law for the benefit of the public, including in particular the clergy and laity of the Church of England’. The ELS Committee has recently begun a review of this part of the society's work and this piece is a part of that review. This article seeks to set out what is currently happening and to solicit

On 27 March 2014 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it had reviewed the evidence gathered by Sussex Police during its investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by Peter Ball, former Bishop of Lewes (1977–1992) and Bishop of Gloucester (1992–1993), and that he would be prosecuted on the following charges

In Loyola High School v Quebec (Attorney General) the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) found that a Roman Catholic high school run by the Jesuits in Montreal, could be exempted from the provincial Ethics and Religious Culture Program (ERCP), legislatively mandated for all schools in Quebec, whether public or private, provided it offered an ‘equivalent program’, if from a Roman Catholic perspective. In