Revisiting the Rustat case

Higton, Mike

Abstract

In May 2021, Jesus College Cambridge submitted to the Diocese of Ely a ‘faculty petition’ – that is, a formal request to alter the fabric of an ecclesiastical building – asking for permission to remove from the west wall of the college chapel a large memorial to Tobias Rustat, ‘because of Rustat’s known involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans’. On 23 March 2022, following hearings the month before, Hodge Dep Ch provided a written judgment in which he denied the application. The college, he said, had not provided a convincing case that the removal of the monument was ‘necessary to enable the Chapel to play its proper role in providing a credible Christian ministry and witness to the College community’, and such a case was needed to outweigh the ‘considerable, or notable, harm’ that would result from the removal ‘to the significance of the Chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest’.

The judgment is, inevitably, presented as a balancing act. It weighs the arguments for removal against the arguments for retention. It will be my contention, however, that the processes of weighing were, in this case, imbalanced. In the presentation of the case to the court, in the questioning and discussion that took place at the hearings, and above all in the written judgment handed down, there are signs that the wrong things were weighed, and the right things weighed wrongly. Whether the final decision was right or wrong, the process that led to it was misshapen, and there is urgent need for a rebalancing of such processes if such failures are to be avoided in future.

Citation

Higton, M. (in press). Revisiting the Rustat case. Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 26,

• Journal Article Type: Commentary
• Acceptance Date: Jun 7, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jun 7, 2024
• Journal: Ecclesiastical Law Journal
• Print ISSN: 0956-618X
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Keywords: Church of England, contested heritage, faculty jurisdiction
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2475242
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal