In recent years, the wearing of Islamic dress in public spaces and elsewhere has generated widespread controversy all over Europe. The wearing of the hijab and other Islamic veils has been the subject of adjudication before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on many occasions. The most recent case before the ECtHR as to the prohibition on wearing the hijab is Lachiri v Belgium. In this case, the ECtHR held that a prohibition on wearing the hijab in the courtroom constitutes an infringement of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to freedom of religion or belief. From the perspective of religious freedom, the ruling of the Strasbourg Court in Lachiri is very significant for many reasons. The purpose of this comment is critically to analyse the ECtHR's decision in Lachiri from the standpoint of religious liberty.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

Although it is indisputable that Muslims have been in Britain for centuries now, it is the events of the recent past that has increasingly focussed attention on the presence of what is now one of Britain's largest minorities. Like numerous other religious minorities in the United Kingdom, Muslims have established themselves and largely conduct their religious and cultural practices within the confines of English law. The aim of this article is to investigate how English law deals with Islam and the regulation, recognition and accommodation, if any, of certain Muslim practices, such as religious divorces and marriages and the establishment of places of worship. The article does not aim to be comprehensive in its coverage of all the issues raised by the Muslim population in the United Kingdom, especially the criminalisation of certain political activities which some Muslims consider to be religious obligations, but simply attempts to analyse how in some respects British Muslims regulate their activities and how a parallel but non-recognised legal system is now in operation and the extent to which English law makes provision for British Muslims and their practices, beliefs and needs.

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.

This article deals with the relation between God and the secular legal systems of Western liberal democracies. It provides a normative argument for the compatibility of God and secular legal reasoning. In our age, in which believing in God is no longer socially axiomatic and the right to religious freedom protects all kinds of theistic and non-theistic religious beliefs, creeds and first philosophies, it seems contrary to religious neutrality for secular legal systems to single out God. This article instead argues that, although God and religion are inextricably intertwined, they affect the legal system in different ways because they are ontologically different. God cannot be reduced to a mere component of theistic religion. A proper understanding of secularisation might call for keeping God outside the legal system but not for driving God out of the public sphere of democratic societies. Secular legal systems are not atheist legal systems; they are legal systems ‘without religion’ but not ‘without God’. Secularisation implies some degree of minimal recognition of God as a metalegal concept. The specific degree of recognition of God appropriate for any given political community depends on its cultural and communitarian identity and should be subject to the rules of democratic procedures and majorities. This is the metalegal God.

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.

Archbishop Dr Barry Morgan having retired, the presidential address at the April meeting was given by the Senior Bishop, the Rt Revd John Davies, Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, on behalf of all of the bishops of the Church, with the emphasis on evangelism – which set the tone for the rest of the Governing Body meeting.

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.

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.

The Labour Government (1997–2010) created a large number of new laws affecting religion. The Blair and Brown years saw the incorporation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, the creation of religiously-aggravated offences, the recognition of civil partnerships, and a tide of legislation affecting education, charities and equality law, which saw the extension of the law to cover discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. And all this legislation has resulted in an abundance of case law. There is more ‘religion law’ – national and international law affecting religion – than ever before. And, for some time, there has been an implicit tension in English law between this new religion law and older laws protecting religion. These old laws, many still on the statute books, were based upon a different premise. They often sought to protect Christianity in general (or the Church of England in particular) as the norm, while providing some degree of toleration for other faiths. Moreover, the legal regulation of religion was characterised by a lightness of touch. The new religion law, by contrast, is facilitative, seeking to protect religious freedom mainly as an individual right which needs to be balanced against other rights. No special protection is afforded to any one religion and protection is often afforded to non-religious beliefs. The new legal framework affords utmost importance to the concept of religious neutrality as the State takes on the role of facilitating the religious market place. The tension between the old laws on religion and the new ‘religion law’ can be seen, for example, in the abolition of the offence of blasphemy (which favoured the Church of England in particular) and its replacement by offences concerning religious hatred (which covers all religions). This tension has recently come to the fore in the Court of Appeal ruling in the application for leave to appeal in McFarlane v Relate Avon Limited.

The Second Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers took place at St George's House, Windsor Castle, from 31st May to 3rd June 2000. The Colloquium was hosted by the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff Law School under the leadership of Professor Norman Doe, whose recent appointment to a personal chair at Cardiff University was a cause of much celebration amongst the participants. The Colloquium was designed to build upon the pioneering work of a similar venture convened last year in Rome by the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas which, together with Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA, cosponsored the event. A report of the first Colloquium appears at (1999) 5 Ecc LJ 281.

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 Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 came into force on 1 January 2006. It provides a new structure for dealing with formal complaints of misconduct against members of the clergy, except in relation to matters involving doctrine, ritual or ceremonial, which continue to be governed by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963. This paper concentrates on the new disciplinary procedures in respect of priests and deacons, rather than those for bishops and archbishops.

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.