# What legal powers does the Church of England have in England today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 24, 2012, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049 "2012-12-24T20:50:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/41 "2012-12-26T15:44:14Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Here are a couple of questions related to the Chuch of England. How does the general population in the UK feel about the Lords Spiritual in Parliament? I don’t think it’s much of an issue having a few bishops in the House of Lords, since it doesn’t have much power. Your average voter doesn’t care about the HoL. The House of Commons is a different matter. It would not be acceptable for someone to have a seat there on any other basis than being elected to it. There has been gradual, stuttering progress towards making the Lords more democratic and representative, but the focus has not been on the “Lords Spiritual”. Bigger concerns have been hereditary peers, most of whom were removed under the Blair government, and the fact that House of Lords is appointed rather than democratically elected. On that issue, a recent attempt to introduce elections was abandoned due to opposition from some Conservative MPs (i.e. members of one of the government’s own parties). ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/42 "2012-12-26T15:55:21Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > I’m going to take shot in the dark here and speculate that the term _civil law_ as opposed to _ecclesiastical law_ means _laws made by the civil (not church) authorities_. That still doesn’t contrast with “statutory law,” which is also law made by civil authorities. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/43 "2012-12-26T15:57:36Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Not necessarily. A civil law jurisdiction uses a system of law that is derived from the Roman civil law. While codification is common in civil law countries, it is not requirement. Duly noted. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/44 "2012-12-26T17:27:08Z")
People on occasion grumble about the presence of Bishops in the House of Lords, but like many things its difficult to get people sufficiently excited about the matter for a concerted campaign to remove their presence to successfully get off the ground. Bear in mind also that Bishops are not whipped; they vote on a personal basis and don’t strictly represent ‘The Church’ except nominally; there have been numerous votes in the Lords where Bishops have voted on both sides, often cancelling each other out. Nor are they obviously conservative, either. There’s recent complaints about their attitudes to women and teh gays, but in the Welfare Reform Bill debates earlier in 2012 the Bishops led a torrent of criticism against a Bill that was believe to be unfairly penalising deserving poor. In terms of canon law, Parliament and the Church tend to keep out of each other’s way but Parliament continues to oversee the Measures (church laws) passed by the General Synod in the Ecclesiastical Committee; but it very rarely vetoes anything - most of it is to do with land rules and pensions to clergy. I, myself, am an atheist, but I am fairly okay with the Bishops being present. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/45 "2012-12-27T19:18:48Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > The Church of England does have its own judicial system. This is completely separate to Statute Law, and are probably best seen as a form of Civil Law. [QUOTE=Acsenray] The uses of the terms “statute” and “civil” here make no sense to me, particularly in the context of a common law country like the United Kingdom. “Civil” means “not criminal” and a statute may be either criminal or civil. [/QUOTE] And so on and so on… Both of you are hopelessly confused and frankly it’s a bit of a toss-up which of you is more so. ‘Civil Law’ has a precise legal meaning in English common law and it is not the one either of you are trying to use. This might not matter much were that meaning not fundamental to what English ecclesiastical law actually is. That English lawyers happen also to talk about ‘civil’ and ‘criminal’ cases is irrelevant. As **Baron Greenback** and **Northern Piper** point out, ‘Civil Law’ properly refers to those types of law that (sort of) derive from Roman law. But in English law the definition was and is more nuanced. Originally the distinction was between ‘canon law’, the European-wide system of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical law based on Roman law, and ‘civil law’, which was other types of law based on Roman law. Both of which were, in turn, distinct from English common law. But both canon law courts and civil law courts nevertheless existed in England. The canon law courts were the Church’s own courts which (mostly) applied international canon law, whereas the civil law courts dealt with those rare types of secular cases over which, for various reasons, English common law was not thought applicable, such as admiralty law or martial law. The Reformation however altered that distinction. The church courts remained in existance and continued to apply the existing canon laws much as before. But the authority on which those laws rested was unclear, was in dispute and, for that reason, was kept ambiguous. It was manifestly the case that much medieval canon law had been enacted by successive Popes and yet it was that authority that the English reformers now wished to deny. The canon lawyers got round this problem by claiming that what they were practising was not canon law at all but civil law. Even although the law itself remained the same. The names of the relevant Oxbridge degrees were changed accordingly. Those lawyers who practised in the church courts (who remained completely separate from and in bitter rivalry with the common law lawyers) were therefore ‘civil lawyers’ (or ‘civilians’), while ‘civil law’ now encompassed and primarily concerned ecclesiastical law. To an English lawyer, the claim that what the church courts dealt with was ‘probably best seen as a form of Civil Law’ is a statement of the bleeding obvious, even if not in the way **casdave** intended. Moreover, the contrast with statute law is equally wrong, although, again, not in the way any of you are supposing. Even before the Reformation, the English Parliament believed that it could legislate on ecclesiastical law and it certainly believed that it could do so thereafter - Henry VIII was adamant, honestly or otherwise, that this was the fundamental issue justifying the break with Rome. It is true that legislation on ecclesiatical law has almost always been negative, concerned with restricting the powers of the church courts, but it was not completely unknown for Parliament to legislate positively on the subject. Nor is the supposed distinction between ecclesiastical law and criminal law at all straightforward either. The church courts did have jurisdiction over heresy and various sexual offences, which, even if we no longer think of them as such, were considered at the time to be crimes. That the church courts could only impose penance as punishment did not make them any less so. That was why the church courts had their own distinction between ‘office’ and ‘instance’ cases, parallelling the distinction between ‘criminal’ and ‘civil’ cases at common law. Of course, that criminal jurisdiction is long since wholly abolished. [QUOTE=Mk VII] Chancel repair liability is one area where property owners can find themselves saddled with a requirement to pay for repairs to the church, even if they aren’t religious. > **[Chancel repair liability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability)** > > Chancel repair liability is a legal obligation on a small number of property owners in England and Wales to pay for certain repairs to a church, often the local parish church. > Where people purchase property within land that was once rectorial (part of a rectory or glebe), they may acquire a responsibility to fund repairs to the chancel of the medieval-founded Church of England parish church or Church in Wales church which that glebe land supported. This can still be invoked by the church counci... [/QUOTE] That’s an important point, as chancel repair liability is the one remnant of English ecclesiatical law that can place a legal obligation, sometimes onerous, on to individuals who may not be members of the Church of England. But such cases are now heard by the secular courts. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049/46 "2012-12-27T19:28:34Z")
It should also be noted that, at least in the US and very probably England as well, you can in fact go to jail as the result of failing to abide by a judge’s verdict in a civil (non-criminal) case. That aside, who wants to talk about _Dairy Queen_ and the merger of law and equity? How about Delaware’s Court of Chancery? Anyone? Bueller? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-legal-powers-does-the-church-of-england-have-in-england-today/645049.md?page=2)