The Orthodox still use the ancient canons of the Apostles and the Ecumenical Councils, which are far fewer in number; additionally the word canon should not be read as “canon law” because the Greek word canon literally means “guidelines” and the Orthodox church will, depending on the specific circumstances, apply the canons with akrivia (exactness) or oikonomia (economy - meaning the relaxation of the rule so as to avoid doing more harm than good through legalism).
Also the contents of the ancient canons are extremely sensible and I believe should be followed by all churches. I will be doing a series highlighting some of them, but essentially, what they do is clarify for example that homosexuality and adultery and polygamy and incest are forbidden, that people who do such things or who castrate themselves or have themselves castrated for reasons other than medical necessity are disqualified from Holy Orders, that clergy may not manage the financial estates of those under their pastoral care (which is a common sense precaution which prevents presbyters from preying upon wealthy widows to obtain their legacy for personal enrichment), and also that clergy may not strike laity or other clergy or other persons whether to induce repentance or for other purposes under penalty of being defrocked. Thus, the flagellation and other forms of corporal punishment that allegedly happened in some Western churches is absolutely forbidden in the Holy Orthodox Church.
There are a number of other canons i am eager to share, but in general, these canons (the ones I just mentioned are examples of those which should default towards application with akrivia) and the principle of oikonomia as a defense against legalism have served us so well that I encourage every church to make use of them. All of the ancient churches either use or at one time used variants on them. Also canons 6 and 7 of Nicaea effectively preclude Papal supremacy, by officially declaring that the churches of Alexandria and Antioch in the case of canon 6, and the recently re-established (as of 425 AD) church of Jerusalem in the case of canon 7, have the same rights and privileges as the Church of Rome, and this principle obviously extends to bishops - also the canons absolutely forbid one bishop from interfering in the jurisdiction of another bishop. Indeed Pope St. Gregory the Great warned of the dangers of a bishop claiming universal jurisdiction after his colleague St. John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, adopted the style "Ecumenical Patriarch", and this proved prophetic because at present the probable successor to Patriarch Bartholomew has been arguing that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is not Primus Inter Pares but Primus Sine Paribus - first without equals rather than first among equals, which is entirely unacceptable to the other Orthodox.
This remark, made by the Archbishop of New York when he was Metropolitan of Bursa, contributed to the churches of Georgia, Bulgaria, Antioch and Russia boycotted the 2016 Great and Holy Synod in Crete, and since then relations between the EP and Jerusalem and Serbia have also soured. Fortunately, the monks of Mount Athos have considerably more influence than the Patriarch within the Church of Constantinople and act as a restraining mechanism, and it is probable that if the current Archbishop of New York does succeed Patriarch Bartholomew, that he will be restrained by the elders of the Holy Mountain.
