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 that a major failing of the concept of legal pluralism has been the inability to distinguish legal norms from other forms of social control. It is suggested that this failure can be overcome by developing the concept of a ‘legal order’ as found in the work of Maleiha Malik and the understanding of law as discourse in the work of the German theorists Niklas Luhmann and Robert Alexy. It is argued that developing these approaches provides a means by which legal norms can be distinguished without adopting either a wholly objective or a completely subjective approach and without focusing exclusively upon the legal norms generated by the state.

Neutral citation – the practice of giving each judgment of a court a reference number or citation – has been in use in the senior courts of England and Wales since 2001. The beginning of January 2016 saw the introduction of a new system of neutral citation for English ecclesiastical courts. The practice direction bringing this practice into force is reproduced below and is preceded by an introductory essay by the Dean of Arches and Auditor.

Following the Reformation, uniformity was a key principle undergirding worship in the Church of England. The Crown claimed the prerogative to order the use of, and to alter, Church services in spite of the provisions of any Act of Uniformity, the Canons or any Declaration of Assent. This caused confusion among the clergy and others as to who had ‘lawful authority’ to permit such usages or changes. This confusion was exacerbated by episcopal claims to a jus liturgicum. Statute and case law, as well as the wording of the Declaration, also ensured rigidity in doctrinal adhesion. Since the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974 and recent amendments to the Canons and the Declaration of Assent, this rigidity has been relaxed and clarity provided as to who may authorise services or permit departure from otherwise authorised forms of service.

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 the earlier companion case, SL v Commission scolaire des Chênes, the Court held that religious parents could not claim an exemption for their children enrolled in the public schools from the same course. This discrepancy between the legal treatment of children in fee-paying religious schools and children in the public school system is one of several interesting aspects of the Loyola decision which this comment will address. Notwithstanding this discrepancy, the Court also restated its earlier observations about the nature and meaning of section 2(a), ‘freedom of conscience and religion’, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter), thereby reassuring some Canadian observers that it is committed to a more robust protection of freedom of religion than may have been surmised from its earlier freedom of religion jurisprudence. Equally interesting is that, in coming to its decision, the majority of the Court moved away from the Court's earlier approach to freedom of religion issues of applying first section 2(a) and then section 1 of the Charter, which operates as a brake on full freedom of religion, to a proportional analysis more in tune with proportionality tests for religious freedom found in English and European cases. Whether this is the start of a long-term trajectory in Canadian freedom of religion cases or a single instance remains to be seen.

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 views on how our education work could be developed. The current education function may be described under three headings.

In January 2013 the Australian Government established the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The terms of reference require the Royal Commission to inquire as what should be done to eliminate or reduce impediments that currently exist for responding appropriately to child sexual abuse and related matters in institutional contexts, including addressing failures in, and impediments to, reporting, investigating and responding to allegations and incidents of abuse. Further, the Commission is directed to focus on systemic issues and to be informed by an understanding of individual cases. In November 2013 the Royal Commission held a public hearing into the Anglican Diocese of Grafton's response to child sexual abuse at the North Coast Children's Home and in October 2014 published its Report.

In October 2015 the Secretary of State for Scotland announced that the Government would bring forward an amendment to the Scotland Bill at consideration stage in the Commons to devolve responsibility for abortion law to the Scottish Parliament. It duly did so: see clause 50 of the Lords Bill as brought from the Commons. At the time of writing the Bill was being considered in the Lords.