England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

1. MR JUSTICE SEDLEY: Not for the first time, Mr Paul Williamson, a Minister of the Church of England, comes before this Court to seek leave to move for judicial review. Both applications are part of his crusade against the ordination of women. Like other crusaders, Mr Williamson is not prepared to admit defeat, however many losses he sustains in the course of his crusade. As a result, the Attorney General has finally (and not before time) moved the Court to make a Civil Proceedings Order against Mr Williamson, and this the Court has done. In order to do so, the Court had to be satisfied that Mr Williamson had habitually, persistently without any reasonable ground instituted vexatious civil proceedings or made vexatious applications to the Court. Although Mr Williamson tells me that he is appealing against the making of this order, it is an extant order and one to which this Court must give proper regard.

2. The consequence of this order is dictated by s 42(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981. It is that he may not proceed in any matter without leave and that leave is not to be given to him unless the High Court is satisfied that the proceedings or application which he seeks to make are not an abuse of Court's process and that there are reasonable grounds for the proceedings or application. While, in relation to proceedings begun as of right (as writ actions and other proceedings usually are) this is a very important intervening safeguard for those who would otherwise be vexed by the proceedings, in relation to judicial review it does no more than replicate the tests which, in any case, the Court applies before granting leave, since nobody may seek judicial review as of right. Nevertheless, as I will indicate in a moment, the finding of the High Court upon which the Civil Proceedings Order has been based is capable of having a bearing upon this Court's evaluation of the matters which a leave application anyway brings into play.

3. The first of Mr Williamson's two applications today is for leave to move for judicial review of a decision of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral in relation to the appointment of a woman to the position of Minor Canon in that cathedral. He bases his argument upon the Charter of St Paul's, which is still the basis of its existence and which in 1396 provided in Latin for persons described as "sacerdos" (or possibly "sacerdotes") to officiate in services. This, Mr Williamson submits, is a masculine word. It was accordingly translated, when the charter was first Englished in the late 19th century, by the word "clergymen" and it therefore excludes women. No Measure such as the Measure of 1993 which plainly enlarges any ambiguous meaning so as to include the feminine with the masculine can override the Royal Charter, in Mr Williamson's contention.

4. Let me assume, for the moment, that it is so and that the word "sacerdos" is the definitive word. It is no more a gender-limited word than the English word "mankind", even if Latin grammars describe the word as a masculine word. If one asks: "What is the Latin for priest?" the answer is: "sacerdos"; and if one asks whether the English word "priest" is a gender-limited word, the answer is no.

5. The argument to the contrary is today as silly as the argument which once (embarrassingly) found favour with these courts as to the eligibility of women to enter the professions, to vote and so forth. This is the end of the 20th century, and it is a time at which we do not find the difficulties that our ancestors found in comprehending ordinary language which is not specifically exclusive as including women as well as men.

6. While, therefore, on this ground alone I would not be prepared to hold that Mr Williamson has an arguable case or therefore, within the meaning of s 42(3) of the Supreme Court Act, that there are reasonable grounds for his application, I would add a further ground for refusing leave. While, as I have said, the judicial review leave test is no more than replicated by the leave test under s 42(3), this Court is entitled -- indeed I think bound -- to have regard to the finding, underlying the making of the Civil Proceedings Order, that Mr Williamson has habitually and persistently and without reasonable grounds been instituting vexatious proceedings. This, at the very least if the case were marginal (which it is not), would be a reason for leaning against the grant of leave to him. But it is not, on any view, a matter which becomes irrelevant if the application before the Court is an application for leave to seek judicial review.

7. With that reflection I move to his second application, which is for leave to seek judicial review of the Church in Wales which has been ordaining women to its priesthood. Mr Williamson, who in relation St. Paul's was at least able to say that it is the cathedral church of the diocese where he has the cure of souls, has no such toehold in Wales, except possibly an ancestral one which he has mentioned anecdotally in the course of argument. He is, in relation in to the Church in Wales, in the language of the decided cases on locus in judicial review, a busybody. He is a stranger to that organisation which, since its disestablishment by Act of Parliament in 1914, has, by s 3(2) of the Welsh Church Act 1914, had its continued existence as a voluntary organisation of individuals, held together by no more than the contract implied by such mutuality.

8. The hangover of statutory provision within the same sub-section is that the rules deemed to be agreed upon by the continuing members of the Church in Wales are capable of being enforced in the temporal courts in relation to property. This application has nothing to do with property. It has to do with doctrine and, in my judgment, the effect of the Welsh Church Act has been to cut free of the jurisdiction of the temporal courts any doctrinal questions within the Church in Wales. This is in contrast to the continuing peculiarity (as I think lawyers and indeed church people from most other countries would view it) that the temporal courts do continue to have cognisance of some doctrinal aspects of the law which governs the Church of England. So far as the Church in Wales is concerned, it is not so.

9. For that reason, too, even if Mr Williamson had locus

10. I would consider that he had no sustainable argument to advance in relation to the Church in Wales. The Court would have no cognisance of the matters to which he wishes to direct his arguments.

11. So far as the first application is concerned, there is equally provision which would in any event have robbed the Court of jurisdiction, had the other conditions of jurisdiction existed, for St. Paul's has a Visitor. It is provided by the statutes that any question as to the interpretation on the constitution or statutes should be referred to the Visitor. If any body or person connected with the cathedral church who has an interest in the matter so requires, the Visitor's decision is then to be final. Mr Williamson is manifestly a person connected with the cathedral church, so that it would have been to the Visitor in any event that his question had to go. On the view I have expressed, there is no viable question, however, for even the Visitor to be concerned with.

12. I therefore refuse Mr Williamson leave under s 42(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981 to institute the proceedings which he seeks to institute, and for the identical reasons, even if I were not bound by s 42 as I am, I would refuse him leave on the merits of his applications. Both applications are therefore dismissed.