Foreword to the first edition

• Author: William A Schabas
• Pages: 19-23

xix

FOR EWORD

to the First Edition

This book is an innovation as far as Canadian legal practitioners,

scholars, and law students are concerned. Academics from France, for

example, have for many years published lengthy manuals covering the

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

the common law tradition with a nything simi lar. The Americans have

their case books, containing lengthy excerpt s from judgments and

hypotheticals for cla ssroom discussion, but nothing along the lines of

a comprehensive monogr aph.

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

found, and in some ways, pioneering role in the related disciplines that

Robert Currie accurately di stinguishes w ith the labels “inter national

crimina l law” and “transnat ional criminal law.” In recent times, Canad a

has been very much at the forefront, but this wa s not always the case.

Although es sentia lly idiosy ncratic developments concer ning inter-

national criminal prosecution date back to the Middle Ages, t here was

nothing resembling t he f‌ield as it now exists until the Par is Peace Con-

ference of 1919. Ambitious plans to prosecute war crimin als for the

ancestors of what we now call genocide, crimes agai nst humanity, and

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

never properly implemented. Nothing signif‌icant is know n about the

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

but f‌ledgling Canadian d iplomats were still to some extent oper ating in

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

been a remote concern to them.