Legal Aid: why is the Government riding roughshod over the rights of the poor?
It is a well established part of the life of General Synod that the clergy and laity can submit motions for debate to the Business Committee. Synod time is both…
Lawyers
“Shabby and shambolic” – the CofE still conspires against truth and justice in historic sexual abuse
Anyone wishing the Church of England well might have hoped that the end of the IICSA hearing last month represented the nadir of its unhappy handling of victims complaints. Despite both Archbishops at last adopting the honest appraisal by the…
Legal Aid is in crisis: can the Church of England help ensure justice?
The Brexit drama is sucking the oxygen of publicity away from many other newsworthy stories, and one of the more regrettable casualties is the parlous state of our Legal Aid…
Ethan Couch and ‘affluenza’: where is God in the absence of visible justice?
‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’ (Henry VI, Pt II, IVii). Sure, I know. Some pernickety pedant with a literary bent is going to tell me…
Dominic Grieve isn’t a traitor; he’s a lawyer with a blind spot
'Unhinged' is how Dominic Grieve described his Brexit-supporting colleagues on the Conservative benches in the House of Commons. Or was it just some of his colleagues? Perhaps it was just…
In Holy Week we should hold our Archbishops’ feet to the fire
Many years ago during the course of a philosophical discussion, an old writer friend of mine offered me one of the most simple yet incisive observations on the human condition.…
The George Bell saga evidences a CofE legal culture which is not merely incompetent, but predisposed toward deception and injustice
How many times must I forgive my errant brother? St Matthew tells us it is seventy times seven, which, by my reckoning, suggests that Archbishop Justin has at least another…
Assisted dying? Suicide courts, not doctors, will judge the merits of your death
This iniquitous Bill refuses to die. It keeps re-emerging like a Godzilla sequel; forever coming back like the proverbial bad penny – unwanted, unpleasant, unfortunate. We are told that…