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 with the study of civil law at Oxford or Cambridge (and before the Reformation also of canon law). Many practised as judges, advocates and proctors in the church courts (until statute ended much of their jurisdiction in the 1850s). Some wrote treatises on church law. A small number were also priests, but less so as the centuries unfolded. While these professional canonists and civilians may have had a monopoly in practising church law, they did not have a monopoly in thinking or writing about it. The clergy, who never trained or practised as lawyers, also had things to say about church law. But the clerical profession has been somewhat neglected by scholarship as a class contributing to the history of church law and jurisprudence. From diocesan bishops through parish priests to clerical scholars in the universities, their books, pamphlets, sermons, letters and other materials often deal with the nature, sources and subjects of church law. Their aims vary: from the educational through the historical or theological to the practical and polemical. These priest-jurists – fathers-in-law, they might quip – contributed much to the intellectual development of church law. One is Robert Owen, a Welsh scholar cleric whose books include Institutes of Canon Law (1884). No scholar has to date unveiled Owen as a notable Anglican priest-jurist – strangely, he has been lost to scholarship as among those whom he himself chided as ‘eminent Canonists’ who ‘hide themselves’ and remain ‘veiled Prophets’.

In the increasingly complex conjunction of law and religion, one of the most crucial questions concerns the privileged place of religion among other convictional positions which are protected under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This article argues the need for a trans-disciplinary approach to the question of definitions, importing insights from philosophy, sociology of law and neo-pragmatism. The aim is to elucidate the view that defining is both an art (in the discursive construction of its object) and a form of politics (as a regulative technology, through which the actual flux and complexity of human reality is brought under control). The question of what religion is (the ontological question) should be acknowledged as a jurisprudential red herring.

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 focused on the implications of that Act for the constitutional relationship between Church, State and nation. More frequently, noting the position of the Church of England under that Act, academics have critiqued the legislation as an exercise in balancing competing human rights. This article by contrast, leaving behind a tendency to treat religion as a monolithic ‘other’, and leaving behind the neat binaries of rights-based analyses, interrogates the internal agonies of the Church of England as it has striven to negotiate an institutional response to the secular legalisation of same-sex marriage. It explores the struggles of the Church to do so in a manner which holds in balance a wide array of doctrinal positions and the demands of mission, pastoral care and the continued apostolic identity of the Church of England.

The best known of all medieval English canonists is William Lyndwood, compiler of the Provinciale. His name derives from what is now Linwood, in Lincolnshire, where his father John (d. 1419) was a woolman, and where (according to his will) he was born. William was sent to Cambridge, where he studied at Gonville Hall and is said to have become a fellow of Pembroke Hall. In the old library of Gonville and Caius College there was an inscription in the window requesting prayers for Lyndwood as ‘hujus collegii quondam commensalis’. His lectures have not survived, and the exact dates of his university residence are not known; but he was certainly a doctor of both laws by 1407, when he was ordained priest. By that time he already held a number of benefices – the earliest we know of was the wardenship of a hospital in 1396 – and he was to collect many more in the course of his career. These were not actual occupations, but sources of income intended to maintain a lawyer destined for high office.

The Church of England and the Church of Sweden have been in communion with one another since the early 1920s and have much in common. Both maintain the historic episcopate, both place great emphasis on liturgy, and since the Reformation both have long been ‘by law established’—a process which began in Sweden when Gustavus Vasa took the throne in 1523 after the successful war of liberation against Denmark, was confirmed by the Riksdag of Västerås in 1544 and, after some vicissitudes, was finally settled by the Pact of Succession of 1604.

In the Parliamentary report for February to May I wrote that Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill, reintroduced under the new ballot procedure for private Peers' bills, had little chance of becoming law in the current session. As it turned out, that judgment was a little premature, because Rob Marris came first in the Commons ballot for private Members' bills and decided to introduce an Assisted Dying (No 2) Bill in similar terms to Lord Falconer's. In the event, however, when his Bill had its second reading debate on 11 September – the first occasion on which the Commons had had an opportunity to debate the matter since 1997 – it was decisively defeated, by 330 votes to 118.

Are the University of Cambridge and its colleges peculiars? The university has always claimed independence from episcopal authority for itself and its colleges. A struggle was resolved in 1434 by a tribunal set up by the Pope, in which the Prior of the monastery of Barnwell heard both sides and decided that the University and its colleges were to be exempt from the supervision of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the Bishop of Ely, in whose diocese the University was situated. This became known as the Barnwell Process. It established the University and it colleges as peculiars defined as having an Ordinary other than the diocesan bishop. Colleges founded later but before the Reformation claimed the same privileges. At the Reformation, the authority of the Pope was replaced by that of the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the privileges that the University and its colleges enjoyed continued to apply. Post-Reformation foundations of colleges tended to claim the same exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction, but without documented evidence. This article argues that the continued acceptance by the Bishop of Ely of the University and its colleges as extra-diocesan confirms them to be peculiars within the legal definition.

One of the main goals of the Second Vatican Council (the 50th anniversary of whose opening will be celebrated in 2012) was the unity of all Christians. Not least among its achievements was the fact that it launched the Catholic Church into the Ecumenical Movement and also paved the way for a global revision of the Church's Code of Canon Law. This article reflects from a Roman Catholic perspective on aspects to do with canon law and ecumenism. It does so in the light of the Council's teaching and reception. Conciliar hermeneutics and questions left open at the Council are considered. In conclusion, the author suggests that greater attention to the Church's charismatic principle and missionary mandate underlined at the Council offers wide scope for continuing exploration among Anglican and Roman Catholic canonists in the cause of unity.

Details of complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 are beginning to come into the public domain. In particular, they raise questions as to the appropriate penalties to be imposed on a respondent, although even more worrying may be the anecdotal misunderstanding among some of the clergy about the moral behaviour expected of them. In addition, procedural questions remain that are not addressed in the written determinations. Such questions include the proper interest in making, and the motive behind, a complaint; the admissibility of hearsay evidence to support a complaint; and episcopal intervention and the bishop's role in reaching his decision.

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 how, following a series of judgments by George Newsom QC, acting first as Chancellor of both London and St Albans dioceses and later as Deputy Dean of the Court of Arches, sales on the open market were more frequently allowed and then how, following the judgment of the Court of Arches in re St Lawrence, Wootton, a more restrictive approach was re-imposed. It considers the practical and legal issues arising out of that judgment. Finally, it considers the role of the Court of Arches as a maker of policy.

We continue to live in the remains – as opposed to the ruins – of a confessional state. Ruins may be picturesque but have no life. Remains, however, do have being. The fact that the remains exist formally only in England does not mean they have no impact elsewhere in the UK. On the contrary, they continue to have life at the very apex of the constitution.

The spat at the 2011 Conservative Party conference between the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor showed how contentious human rights legislation remains. Although Theresa May portrayed the claimant as having won the Article 8 right to remain in Britain because of his relationship with his cat, the judge had simply accepted the cat as one piece of evidence that the claimant had a genuine family life with his partner. The Home Secretary's principal point was that the right to respect for private and family life under section 8.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) should be read in conjunction with section 8.2, which adds that such rights should not be overridden except where it is

Churches, in common with other unincorporated associations, thrive on a healthy dynamic amongst their members whose energies and gifts, properly harnessed, can serve to promote mission and witness, to build up the community of faith and to evangelise with vigour and integrity. Not infrequently, however, in both aspiration and application, the conduct of believers (individually and corporately) can fall short of that paradigm and the result can be destructive and debilitating. This paper identifies and explores areas within the current structures of the Church of England where express provision already exists for a formal process of mediation or other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), suggesting that greater use of mediation in the future would be beneficial to the Church of England functionally, spiritually and (not least) financially.1

The Marriage (Wales) Act 2010 illustrates that a disestablished church will always occupy an intermediate position between an established church and one which has never been established: the Church in Wales needed an Act to reform its marriage law, whereas paradoxically the Church of England legislated for itself by Measure. The article outlines how the provisions on marriage evolved during the passage of the disestablishment legislation; accepts the validity of contemporaneous arguments based on inconsistency; and outlines previous occasions when the marriage laws of England and of Wales have fallen out of step. It concludes by accepting that the continued establishment of the marriage law in Wales is inconsistent, but that any change is likely to depend on a wholesale reform of marriage law.

The taking of oaths of allegiance to the Crown has a long history pre-dating the Reformation. However, the shifting balance of power in the sixteenth century gave greater political weight to the taking of oaths, and developments in the monarchy were matched by developments in the oaths required of clerics. In the present day all clergy are required to take the Oath of Allegiance prior to ordination and on taking up clerical posts. Other office-holders in the church are also required to do so.

In this paper, the authors present different views of the legal implications of Percy v Church of Scotland Board of National Mission, in which the House of Lords reversed the Court of Session and held that a former minister could sue the Church under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and, contrary to previous views, probably had an enforceable contract for services. Cranmer describes the basis for the decision and suggests that it represents a realistic view of the employment status of clergy. Peterson is less optimistic about the decisions legal and practical effects and argues that it undermines the constitutional status of the Church of Scotland as well as overall prospects for religious freedom in Scotland.

Questions of the mutual recognition, or not, of the ministry of different Churches have been high on the ecumenical agenda for many years. Roman Catholic sacramental theology, manifest inter alia in Canon Law, has a clear understanding of the validity or invalidity of sacraments, including holy orders. Validity is a strong word and implies that sacramental acts which are not valid are de facto ineffective.