Religious Confession Privilege and the Common Law

A. Keith Thompson, Religious Confession Privilege and the Common Law, Boston, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011, 414 p. - ISBN 978-9004172326 -euro135,00; US$192.00.

A. Keith Thompson adds his name to the growing list of legal authorities who take the position that the touchstone cases of English jurisprudence which appear to have ruled against religious confession privilege cannot in fact be taken as authorities for this proposition. The priest-penitent privilege, as it was originally known, denotes the exemption from testimony in accordance with the law of evidence granted to confessors regarding matters heard by them during the course of sacramental confession. This book considers the application of this privilege to religious confessions in general. The decisions concerning the privilege were entrenched by subsequent rulings in common law jurisdictions that built upon them, as well as evidentiary texts which...