Confidential to ACI

Addendum in light of the Presiding Bishop's April 30, 2008 Letter to the House of Bishops:

  A defense now proffered by the Presiding Bishop and her supporters is that the same procedures were followed in the recent cases of Bishops Davies and Moreno.  Past violations of the canon's clear provisions are said to justify current ones.  In considering this defense, it is necessary to distinguish three senses of "precedent" in legal usage.   One is the well-known sense of precedent as a formal ruling on a legal issue by a competent juridical body.  This is clearly not the case here as no one has suggested that the prior cases were determined to be canonical by any body reviewing the