benefit of clergy

benefit of clergy (uncountable)

1. (UK, law, historical) A legal provision by which clergymen (and, later, anybody who could read) could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an ecclesiastical court under canon law.
   • 1944, George Orwell, Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali:

     It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. That artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people.