This article considers the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel; the development of the Law Commission’s recommendations on offences against religion and public worship in 1985 (which ultimately led to the abolition of the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales in 2008); and proposals from various international bodies which now argue for similar reform.

Today, the Chancery Court is the appeal court for the province of York in the Church of England. There are some excellent specialised period-specific studies which take in the Chancery Court alongside other York church courts, mostly from the Borthwick Institute at York.1 However, there is no book exclusively devoted to the Chancery Court setting out its full history. The court is also rather neglected in standard texts on the history of English ecclesiastical law. Even the great Richard Helmholz has no index entry on it in his monumental history of canon law in England.2 Holdsworth in his well-known history of the common law has a page and a half on courts of the Archbishop of Canterbury; as to York’s archiepiscopal courts, he simply states they ‘corresponded’ to those of Canterbury.3 These are typical of most scholars today.4 This article, therefore, seeks to redress this imbalance – to correct what seems to be a case of juridical amnesia and so to unveil the forgotten, or hidden, Chancery Court of York. It offers a short history of the identity, jurisdiction, officers, records and processes, and jurisprudence of the Chancery Court of York. It also points out some key differences between the Chancery Court and its Canterbury equivalent, the Arches Court. The article focuses mainly on its post-Reformation history, as treated in the dispersed secondary literature – and it adds to this what the English ecclesiastical lawyers since the Reformation – civilians, common lawyers, and clerical jurists – say about this York court.

The proviso to Canon 113 of 1603 was not a substantive enactment of the seal of confession, but rather was intended to ensure that the canon did not conflict with a continuing canonical duty not to disclose sins revealed in confession. The 1947 Canon Law report proposed two draft canons, one regulating which priests could hear confessions, and one enacting the seal substantively. In response to criticism of these drafts, Archbishop Fisher proposed what became paragraphs 1–3 of Canon B 29. Attempts to restrict hearing of confessions to certain categories of priests were eventually abandoned in favour of what became paragraph 4. The draft canon embodying the seal was replaced by a draft Clause based on the proviso, but Government lawyers indicated that it would not receive royal assent. Instead, the proviso was left in place. An act of Convocation based on it was also passed to signal the Church’s continued espousal of the seal as a doctrinal principle. The Convocations eventually agreed to delete the proposed new Clause, while a canon explicitly retaining the proviso when the rest of the 1603 code was repealed received royal assent. That no priest would in practice break the seal, even if instructed to do so by a judge, was almost universally accepted.

This article considers the following three matters: first, how every Christian tradition globally has its own system of canon law or other regulatory instruments; second, how these laws contribute to ecumenism as an instrument for greater visible communion between the separated churches of Christianity; and third, how a comparative approach to juridical ecumenism informs our understandings of synodality.

Until recently the faculty jurisdiction did not extend to trees in churchyards. This article explains how trees in churchyards became subject to that jurisdiction and explores the complicated law relating to churchyard trees.1

This article proposes that while the four instruments of communion of the Anglican Communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ Meeting, the Lambeth Conference, and the Anglican Consultative Council) are not synods, they nevertheless manifest synodality. The historical origins of member church autonomy are first explored; then, each of the instruments is briefly discussed in turn; finally some suggestions are made for further exploration in the mode of receptive ecumenism.

For centuries, English law discriminated against Catholics and Jews. Those rules were mostly repealed in the 19th century, but surprisingly the law still says that a Catholic or Jewish person cannot advise the King on appointments within the Church of England or Church of Scotland. Ordinarily, new Church of England bishops are nominated by the King on the advice of the Prime Minister, but a Catholic or Jewish Prime Minister could not exercise that function; it would have to devolve on another Minister of the Crown. The article analyses the impact of this rule today, and, drawing on two interviews, considers how this rule was applied when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. The article argues that the discriminatory rule should be repealed, allowing any Prime Minister, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, to carry out their duties in full.

This article explores the canon law of the Old Catholic Churches, which have been in full communion with the Anglican Churches since 1931. It discusses the different traditions of canon law which form the basis of the present constitutions, their common features and their main characteristics. It also addresses two types of challenge for the near future: finding an appropriate balance between episcopal and synodal competences, and dealing with the parallel jurisdictions on the European continent.

The XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (4 October 2023 to 27 October 2024) considered what it means to be a ‘Synodal Church – Communion, Participation and Mission’. Its celebration was key to understanding the pontificate of Pope Francis: in October 2015, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops by St Paul VI, he said: ‘From the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome, I sought to enhance the Synod, which is one of the most precious legacies of the Second Vatican Council […] it is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church in the third millennium’.1 This article examines the extent to which the Roman Catholic church can be said to be synodally led and episcopally governed.

A devise of an advowson to human trustees in a will without using words of limitation takes effect, as the result of a parenthesis in section 30 of the Wills Act 1837 and of subsequent legislation, as a settlement for the lifetime of the last survivor of the original trustees; thereafter the advowson will pass to the testator’s residuary beneficiaries. The Law Commission’s Report on Wills recommends that this anomaly should not apply to wills coming into effect in the future. The existing rules will continue to govern wills made before any change in the law.

This article traces the developments in the laws and guidance underpinning safeguarding practices in the Church of England over the last 30 years and critically analyses the methodologies used, and outcomes reached, in a number of Lessons Learnt Reviews (including the Makin Review).

On 2 February 1932, Alan Don, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordan Lang, recorded in his diary the simple entry: ‘Church Assembly – not very invigorating’.1 This has been the tenor of the relationship between the English and the governing bodies of the church for centuries. This article seeks to describe the role of synodality at the regional level2 by reference to the General Synod of the Church of England, with a brief comparative study of the tikanga system in New Zealand, and asks the question whether the procedures meet the expectation of synodality.

The International Theological Commission, in its document on synodality, observed that ‘the concept of synodality refers to the involvement and participation of the whole People of God in the life and mission of the Church’.1 More specifically, it refers to participation in the exercise of discernment and decision making that is intrinsic to that mission. This discernment and decision making requires structures to make it clear not merely when decisions have been made and who makes them, but how they are made and how the people who make them work together. Such structures are embodied in legal instruments that are appropriate to the context, which here is the area of Church life which is between the properly local – the diocese – and the properly universal – the Holy See. In history the usual word for the gatherings that embodied these attempts was ‘synod’. Although the synods are seen as gatherings of bishops it is clear throughout that history that many others have been present at them: a notable and famous example was the presence of the Alexandrian deacon Athanasius at the Council of Nicea. Discernment and decision making at the supra-diocesan level has always involved bishops – but not only bishops. This article lays out the provisions of the current law surrounding this task in the Roman Catholic Church.

This article examines issues that relate to synodality at the local (diocesan) level, with a particular focus on the constitutions and functions of diocesan synods in the Church of England.