This article discusses the application of the proportionality test which the Court of Session in Scotland and the European Court of Human Rights carried out when reviewing the limitations to worship and public gatherings imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article concludes that judges should not use the proportionality standard of review as an avenue to circumvent their duty of neutrality towards religious dogmas.

Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects manifestations of religion or conscience from interference under Article 9(1) except insofar as such interferences can be justified under Article 9(2). This analysis asks when Article 9 will protect believers who are forced to choose between religious observance and pursuit of secular ‘goods’ and offers some conclusions about how the protection of believers from forced choices compares with the protection of manifestations of religious belief. It also considers whether cases where believers are asked to choose between religious obligations and protected goods raise particular issues under 9(2). Finally, the conclusions arrived at are applied to an illustrative hypothetical example. The objective is to demonstrate the potential reach of 9(1), and to explore the 9(2) analysis specific to protected-good cases.2

During the course of 2012 two significant developments occurred in Germany that are of wider interest for those who study law and religion internationally. This brief note draws attention to a decision from Cologne that was probably wrongly decided, the effect of which will be reversed by amended legislation, and to a directive from the Catholic Bishops' Conference concerning the excommunication of those Catholics who decline to pay their church tax.

It is now generally recognised that as a matter of history the canon law was applied, subject to variations by local custom, in pre-Reformation England just as much as throughout the rest of Western Christendom. Indeed such local variations were permitted by the canon law itself. As Professor Brooke concluded in The English Church and The Papacy From The Conquest To The Reign of King John:

“The English Church recognised the same law as the rest of the Church; it possessed and used the same collections of Church law that were employed in the rest of the Church. There is no shred of evidence to show that the English Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was governed by laws selected by itself.”

The same was also true until the Reformation.

In this article we discuss the recent history of the failed draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure, situating this within the broader context of the ordination of women and debates around the Equality Act exceptions for an organised religion. We aim to provide an account of the ways in which equality rights have been implemented in the relevant law; how the Church of England is responding to these rights; and how broader society understands the importance of gender equality and reacts to Synod's rejection of the draft Measure. We analyse these with reference to theories of heteronormativity and scholarship of human rights. In doing so, we aim to explain what is happening in the Church of England and broader society, and draw some conclusions about the current opportunities open to the Church and the state in matters of rights and equality.1

Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974 provides that ‘[a] man in holy orders; a regular minister of any religious denomination [and] [a] vowed member of any religious order living in a monastery, convent or other religious community’ is ineligible to serve on a criminal (and also a civil) jury. This has been the law since 1972. For the remainder of this century members of the clergy have been eligible, but not compellable, jurors. In practice they did not serve. The change effected in 1972 is a reversion to the position which probably prevailed in the Middle Ages. Aside from the occasional official report, the liability of religious functionaries to serve on juries in criminal trials has been rarely written about. The last time it happened was in 1882. The object of this article is to fill the lacuna by tracing the history of the clergy's ineligibility for jury service in criminal trials and the reasons for it.

The title of this article is deliberately provocative: what meaning can be attached to a concept which lacks all the classic jurisprudential marks of authority, by those who concern themselves with the legal aspects of Anglican churches? Conversely, what lessons can be learned by them from the very persistence of such a concept over so very many years?

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 historical records to define private patronage and analyse the current role of the four broad categories of private patrons: private individuals, educational bodies, guilds and patronage societies. While acknowledging the benefits that patronage can bring, this article advocates substantive reform for the future including a sunset rule for private individual patronage. The article suggests that reform of the law of private patronage will make a positive contribution to other contemporary issues before the Church by promoting diversity in vocations, facilitating necessary pastoral reorganisation and adding to the dialogue about the future of the parish system.

There have been a number of tribunal decisions on the admissibility of discrimination claims concerning ‘belief’ as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Some have favoured the claimant, establishing, inter alia, that opposition to fox hunting and hare-coursing, a belief in the ‘higher purpose’ of public service broadcasting and a commitment to vegetarianism constitute ‘philosophical beliefs’ for the purposes of the Equality Act. Others do not, such that a belief in wearing a poppy or, in contrast with an earlier decision, a commitment to vegetarianism do not qualify. The admissibility of these claims tended to turn on the extent to which the belief in question was considered cogent or was sufficiently weighty and substantial. In Forstater v CGD Europe & Anor, whether or not a belief fell into the protected category focused on the rather different issue of whether or not it was worthy of respect because of its compatibility (or otherwise) with the dignity and rights of others.

The public religion of the Isle of Man is protestant Christianity in the liturgical tradition of the English Prayer Book. The religious establishment is headed by a bishop, who has been since 1541 subject to the oversight of the Archbishop of York.

I am grateful to the Society for the opportunity to mark the centenary of the Enabling Act and the beginning of the Church Assembly with some reflection on an often ignored but highly valuable feature of that inauguration: the Single Transferable Vote or STV. I tried on one respected registrar recently an illustration of what the task must be like for those who do not welcome it. Was it, I suggested, like a blind person doing a jigsaw where the pieces were all shaped differently from each other – in other words, where the blind person could ensure that it was put together accurately, but on the other hand never saw the picture? The response was that that picture reflected accurately how it had in fact felt to that registrar. That might suggest that this lecture should be explaining and commending STV as general good practice, but in the event the process and virtues of STV have here to be largely taken for granted. I offer here one short commendation of STV.

At our annual conference next March the proposed topics for discussion are the parson's freehold and clergy discipline. Although it will necessarily touch upon the latter, this article is primarily concerned with the parson's freehold. It is an attempt to consider some of the ramifications of that freehold now that it is a subject once more to be debated by the General Synod. I do not intend to reach any conclusion as to whether or not that freehold should be abolished or, indeed, as to what should replace it if it is. Rather, I would seek to raise questions that should be considered within the legal sphere whilst that debate continues. In so doing, however, I am only certain of three things: first, that the parson's freehold cannot be considered in isolation; second, that it is essential before anything is abolished that careful stock is taken of what actually is being abolished (otherwise the consequences may be other than intended); and third, that equal care must be given to what, if anything, should replace it. Underlying all this is my own conviction that the law is a framework to regulate a society, in this instance the Church. It may be a bastion to protect the weak or it may be a tool misused by the strong but in the last analysis, once others have decided that it should be altered, the lawyer's duty is to advise and then to implement. There is nothing immutable about the ecclesiastical law.