The organising principle of modern Reform is informed autonomy: the individual Jew, having engaged seriously with the tradition, decides which practices to take on. That is a real principle rather than a licence, and Reform institutions spend a great deal of effort on the first word. But it does mean that Reform has no equivalent of a law committee that can rule, and its governance is correspondingly congregational.
Congregations are self-governing and belong to a union, the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, the Movement for Reform Judaism in Britain, and national bodies elsewhere, gathered globally in the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Rabbis are trained at the movement's seminaries and belong to a rabbinical conference which issues guidance, not rulings.
Two decisions have had consequences beyond the movement. Reform ordained the first woman rabbi in America in 1972 and has since ordained women, and later openly gay and lesbian clergy, as a matter of course; the great majority of Reform rabbis in some countries are now women. And in 1983 the American Reform rabbinate adopted patrilineal descent, recognising as Jewish the child of one Jewish parent of either sex who is raised as a Jew. That single decision is the largest formal breach between the movements, because it means that Reform and Orthodox Judaism no longer agree on the membership of the Jewish people, not merely on its practice. Israel's rabbinate does not recognise Reform conversions for personal status purposes, though Israeli courts have compelled recognition for some civil purposes including the law of return.
On liturgy the movement rewrote rather than abridged: full gender-inclusive language for God and for the patriarchs and matriarchs, restored Hebrew, and prayer books that print several theological options on the same page.