Citation 23 & 24 Vict c 32 | Royal assent 3 July 1860 | |
Long title An Act to abolish the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts . . . in England and Ireland in certain Cases of Brawling. | ||
The Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 (23 & 24 Vict c 32) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is one of the Ecclesiastical Courts Acts 1787 to 1860. The Act is sometimes known as the "ECJA."
Contents
Section 1
This section was repealed by section 87 of, and Schedule 5 to, the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963.
Section 5
This section repealed the Brawling Act 1551. This section was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1875.
Section 6
This section provided that nothing contained hereinbefore in this Act was to be taken to repeal or alter the Brawling Act 1553, the Act of Uniformity 1558 or section 18 of the Toleration Act 1688. This section was repealed by section 1 of, and Part II of the Schedule to, the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1969.
Developments
In 1998, political campaigner Peter Tatchell was charged under Section 2 of the Act for "indecent behaviour in a church."
In 2002, the House of Lords' Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales delivered their First Report. In Chapter 3 of this report, they examined the "Law as it stands," including looking at "Old statutes." This included the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860, where they revealed that "According to statistics made available by the Home Office, there were 60 prosecutions under this Act in the six years 1997-2002, with 21 convictions." In his evidence to the Committee, David Calvert-Smith, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that: "We use it sufficiently often or have used it in the past for it obviously to be the right offence to use and a redrafted Section 2 would probably be a (albeit infrequently used) valuable offence."