This Council is being very thorough and continues to provide explanations which were often lacking in previous rulings of other Councils. Being appellant-friendly is a great policy.
This council has been careful to do its homework. A good bit of the complexity of the Bush Institute/Library at SMU was taken into account. The questions of the Alaska layman attempting to clarify who makes the decision about church membership, while not answered, were sorted out and explained.
So far, this Council has avoided the gross ineptitude that haunted other past Councils (for example JCM 1048).
Contrary to what some other knowledgeable commentators say, I believe this Council has not sought to avoid controversy. They have carefully parsed the briefs and law so that their positions have been clear. They have not gone beyond precedents on what is moot and hypothetical set in the previous Council because they have not found a change in church law that would move them in any new direction.
I have become so confident of the competence of this Council that I am surprised when they do not follow through on a key point. Was that layman really still a legal representative of a discontinued church? What was the actual lease cost arrangement in the Bush institute/library case? Should not the briefs of the appellants have addressed those matters rather than presuming the Council would pick them up?
This is no activist Council as its predecessor was. It will be interesting to see how they deal with issues yet to be sent their way.
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