Canon Law

This is a pioneering book, accomplished in itself and potentially a stimulus for future jurisprudential trends in a comparative context. Professor Coughlin, a Catholic Franciscan priest who has studied, taught and practised civil and canon law, has chosen Catholic canon law as the ‘home system’ to compare and contrast in important respects with what can be termed Anglo-American legal theory. This legal theory has very familiar and distinguished exponents, among them: Austin, Dworkin, Finnis, Fuller, Hart and Raz. The simple listing of these names should, however, immediately caution against treating ‘theory’ in the singular as implying a greater intellectual uniformity than is in fact the case. One might also recall Finnis’s remark that theory regresses as well as progresses. As befits a comparative study, there is an element of critical reciprocity, but basically the objective is to clarify the nature of canon law, and also to suggest ways in which...

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