Resumen de Conflitto e bilanciamento in ambito canonico, tra norma penale in bianco e principio di legalità

Antonio Ingoglia, Giuseppe La Barbera

• The canonical penal system appears marked by a glaring contradiction: on the one hand, it accepts the principle of legality, with its corollaries of the prohibition of the argumentum a simili, of the criteria of strict interpretation and extension of the lex mitior; on the other hand, it contemplates a provision of a general nature, which opens up to atypical cases by allowing the prosecution of the infringement of a law even «beyond the cases expressly established» by the code or other criminal laws.

  The reasons for this antinomy may, on closer examination, be unduly conditioned by a too narrow parameter of declination of criminal law, more in accordance with the secular juridical experience than with that of the Church. In this regard, this contribution aims to highlight the reasons and limits of the application of the traditional principle nullum crimen and nulla poena sine previa lege in the canonical context, and to access a reconstruction of the same that takes into account the physiognomy of the penal system of the Church, according to which it should be more conveniently calibrated.