Foreword to the first edition

• Author: Robert J Currie, Dr Joseph Rikhof
• Pages: 19-23

xix

FOREWORD

to the First Edition

This book i s an innovation as f ar as Canad ian legal practit ioners, schol-

ars, and law students are concerned. Academics from France, for ex-

ample, have for many years published lengthy manuals covering the

f‌ield of Droit international pé nal, but I cannot think of a country from

the common law tradition with a nything similar. The American s have

their case books, containing lengthy excerpts from judgments and

hypotheticals for clas sroom discussion, but nothing along the lines of

a comprehensive monograph.

Nothing could seem more appropriate today, given Canada’s pro-

found, and in some ways, pioneering role in the related disciplines t hat

Robert Currie accurately distinguishes with the labels “international

crimin al law” and “transn ational crimin al law.” In recent times, Canad a

has been very much at the forefront, but this was not always t he case.

Although es sentially id iosyncratic de velopments concerni ng inter-

national crimi nal prosecution date back to the Middle Ages, there was

nothing resembling the f‌ield as it now exists until the Paris Peace Con-

ference of 1919. Ambitious plans to prosecute war criminals for the

ancestors of what we now call genocide, crimes against humanity, and

aggression were set out in the post-war treatie s, but these plans were

never properly implemented. Nothing signif‌icant is known about the

Canadian posit ion in this area. Our country was present at Versailles,

but f‌ledgling Canadian d iplomats were still to some extent operating i n

the shadow of the British Empire. Intern ational criminal law must have

been a remote concern to them.