matters purely ecclesiastical
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 393 U.S. 440 - Presbyterian Church in US v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church · 1969Most cited · 1,426 citing opinions
the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise
How often courts cite the case defining “matters purely ecclesiastical”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “matters purely ecclesiastical” — 1,419 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.