If you follow the news and analysis of church property cases floating around right now you probably already read the Anglican Curmudgeon.  Mr. Haley’s legal knowledge, analysis and insights are very helpful in tracking and understanding the developing and sometimes confusing court cases that are out there.  And while he primarily tracks the twists and turns of the Anglican/Episcopal legal disputes, property and otherwise, as I have regularly observed there are implications for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) cases as well.

Well, in a recent post Mr. Haley noted and included the recent (Sept. 18) decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court case of All Saints v. Campbell.  For those who view the law to say that church property belongs to the local congregation this is one of the rare higher court decisions in their favor.  But I bring this decision, and Mr. Haley’s blog post, to your attention because it is also a very clearly written decision with a very good discussion of the current case law regarding hierarchical denominations.  As the Curmudgeon says:

The opinion is so clear and well-written, in fact, that there is
scarcely any need to translate the greater part of it for a lay person.

So, if you want a nice introduction to the legal background in these cases I can do no better than to refer you to either the decision, or his mildly annotated presentation, and suggest you begin at the section that is headed “Law/Analysis.”  Towards the end it does get specific to South Carolina when it reviews and elaborates on a previous ruling in that state court which presented the rule to apply for neutral principles cases in that jurisdiction.  But it is really only at that point that the legal jargon really starts to be used.

You will notice that although this is a state court decision, it does a nice job of explaining the U.S. Supreme Court decisions and their application to previous state cases.  In addition, you will also see how many of these cases involve disputes at Presbyterian churches, probably more than any other denomination, going back over 100 years to the original U.S. Supreme Court decision in Watson v. Jones in 1871.

As with many of these cases the decision involves details specific to this church and South Carolina (e.g. Colonial English Law still in effect) which the Curmudgeon points out is not applicable elsewhere.  If you are interested in these matters it does make for interesting reading, but for the general national perspective you can stop at the end of the Law/Analysis section.

Very interesting reading.  Thanks for the pointer and the commentary Mr. Haley.