ABSTRACT
The Court of Arches was an ecclesiastical court, the Archbishop of Canterbury's court, applying ecclesiastical law as judged by a civil lawyer. Appeal, lay to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, an essentially common-law court created in 1833. The only civilian on the Privy Council was Lushington, who could not sit on an appeal from himself. Phillimore, a civil lawyer, had earlier stated that a mandamus was issuable, but Coleridge, a common lawyer and the son of a judge, knew that no judge would issue one. They replied that a judge 'would probably be very reluctant to interfere in a matter which was one of academical opinion'. The delay in hearing the appeal to the Privy Council was due in part to the problem of selecting the panel of legal members for the trial.
