Anscombe Centre Tribute to John Finnis Upon His CBE Appointment

The Anscombe Bioethics Centre pays tribute to John Finnis, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus at Oxford, who was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours List 2023 for services to legal scholarship.

Professor Finnis was formerly a Governor of the Anscombe Centre (1981-2007, 2010-2016), including former Vice-Chair of Governors (mid-1990s), and has contributed to numerous of our publications, including:

• The Dependent Elderly
• Euthanasia, Clinical Practice and the Law
• Issues for a Catholic Bioethic
• Culture of Life – Culture of Death
• Cooperation, Complicity & Conscience
• Incapacity & Care

He has also contributed to numerous submissions of the Centre to governmental and public bodies – of which the most significant was the Submission to the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Medical Ethics (1993-1994) – and has provided many additional conference contributions and lectures, most notably the Anscombe Memorial Lecture 2014, which you can see here.

This was reproduced in The Moral Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe, part of the St Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs series.

It was at the request of Professor Finnis that, in 1993, the late Pope Benedict XVI (when he was Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote a recommendation of the work of the Centre, which we mentioned in our In Memoriam for the late Pontiff yesterday. Again, this is reproduced below.