Canon law

Task 4. Review the text.

After the Norman Conquest, William I separated the courts of law into lay courts administering the common law, and ecclesiastical (or church) courts. In the early days the church courts were very important locally and nationally and assumed a wide jurisdiction. They were influenced by Roman law. The matters dealt with:

a. clergy discipline;

b. offences by clergy and laity against church doctrine, faith, and morality;

c. marriage, e.g. declaring whether a lawful marriage had in fact taken place (if there was no valid marriage it was declared null); judicial separation (ordering that the parties be no longer bound to cohabit as man and wife, though not dissolving the marriage tie); and divorce (dissolving the marriage);

d. legitimacy, e.g. declaring whether a child of a marriage was legitimate or the heir;

e. wills of personalproperty, e.g. declaring whether a document was a lawful will, and the administration of the estates of deceased persons so far as personal property was concerned where the deceased left no will (i.e. was intestate). Realty (land) descended to the heir or other person in accordance with strict common law rules, and disputes as to ownership and possession of realty fell exclusively within the jurisdiction of the common law courts.

For church purposes England was divided into the Province of Canterbury and the Province of York, each in the charge of an archbishop. The two provinces were each divided into dioceses, each in the charge of a bishop. Each bishop had his Consistory Court for the diocese which he administered and which was in his spiritual charge. The presiding officer of this diocesan court was called a Chancellor and was appointed by the bishop as his representative in the court. Appeal from the bishops’ diocesan courts went to the respective provincial courts of Canterbury (called the Court of Arches) and York (known as the York Chancery). From the provincial courts appeal lay to the Pope, until this right was abolished after the Reformation by the Statute of Appeals Act, 1532. The Statute of Appeals Act brought the church courts in England more and more under the control of the State, but their separate jurisdiction continued on into the nineteenth century.

However, in 1857, the jurisdiction in divorce, judicial separation, nullity and legitimacy was transferred to the Divorce Court which was set up in that year by the Matrimonial Causes Act. Testamentary matters relating to wills were also transferred in 1857 from the church courts to a new Court of Probate.

The new civil courts of Probate and Divorce were staffed by civil lawyers who replaced the ecclesiastical lawyers, and the legal principles which had hitherto been enforced in the church courts and which had been based on canon law were incorporated in the law of England.

In 1875 the Probate Court and the Divorce Court were incorporated into the Supreme Court of Judicature set up by the Judicature Act, 1873. Probate is now dealt with in the Family Division and Chancery Division of the High Court. Divorce falls within the Family Division.

Task 5. Read & comprehend the text.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-17