Edward N. Peters, who has held the Edmund Cardinal Szoka chair in faculty development at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit since 2005, has been appointed to serve as a consultant to the church's highest court, the Apostolic Signature. That's the Vatican court headed up by Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke.
Peters is the first layperson to be named to the post. He authors a blog (http://canonlawblog.blogspot.com/) under the title "In the Light of the Law: a canon lawyer's blog on current issues."
NCR readers may want to compare and contrast his take on the Phoenix-abortion-excommunication case ( The Phoenix abortion case) with that of Fr. Tom Doyle's (Shades of grey in a world of apparent absolutes), which was posted to NCRonline.org earlier this week.