The 2022 Revision of The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion

Abstract

At the 2008 Lambeth Conference, The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion were launched. For the first time, detailed principles of Anglican canon law were made manifest, the fruit of earlier research by the legal academic Norman Doe. As early as 2002, the Primates of the Communion had recognised that ‘the unwritten law common to the Churches of the Communion and expressed as shared principles of canon law may be understood to constitute a fifth “instrument of unity”’. The Principles project proved to be a wellspring of legal scholarship and ecumenical activity both before and after the 2008 publication.