Introduction: Locating Transnational and Cross-Border Criminal Law

• Author: Robert J. Currie, KC
• Profession: Professor of Law and Distinguished Research Professor, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University
• Pages: 3-24

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Introduction: Locating Transnational and

Cross-Border Criminal Law

ROBERT J. CURRIE, KC*

A. THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

As its title indicates, this book deals with a pervasive modern phenom-

enon — crime that crosses borders — and specically with the bodies of

law that purport to regulate it. It is a subject that is of major and current

concern to governments, particularly (but not exclusively) law enforce-

ment authorities, across the world.

And it is no wonder that this is so. In , organized crime gangs

threaten the very stability of some states, such as Mexico, and reap untold

billions in illicit prot across the world. Human tracking, cross-border

fraud and extortion, and terrorist attacks extract a global-scale toll of

human misery that is virtually impossible to measure. e age-old crime

of piracy is still a problem. Illegal depletion of natural resources, such

as wildlife, timber, and sh, for the purpose of tracking contributes

* Professor of Law and Distinguished Research Professor, Schulic h School of Law,

Dalhousie University.

 Evan Ellis, “Neighbor at Risk: Mexico’s Deepening Crisis” Center for Strategic &

International Studies ( September ), online: www.csis.org/anal ysis/neighbor-

risk-mexicos-deepening-crisis.

 Andrew Rettman, “EU navies to hunt pirates in West Africa” euobserver ( January

), online: https://euobserver.com/world/.

 . , 

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to other major worldwide plights, ecosystem destruction, and resultant

global warming.

Moreover, even to speak of these brands of criminal conduct under

subject-matter labels is to under-emphasize the fact that, like the multi-

national corporations it most resembles, criminality is increasingly

vertically and horizontally integrated on a scale that renders borders

somewhat irrelevant. As I have recently written elsewhere,

[t]his is not just a matter of magnication of “classic” organized crime

gangs which diversify their operations through fraud, prostitution, illegal

gambling, etc., but rather a massive expansion in uidity of organiz ation

and operational exibility. e convergence is as startling as it is logical:

rebel groups who fund attacks on civilian populations via tracking in

wildlife parts, minerals, and humans, enlisting the assistance of organ-

ized gangs; terrorist attacks carried out by specialist cybercrime otillas;

gangland chieftains in one state who use piracy-generated booty to cor-

rupt public ocials in a second state, with prots laundered in a third.

For its part, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) issued a reso-

lution in  that, while nominally focused on the convergence of organ-

ized crime and terrorism as a threat to international peace and security, is

practically a manifesto calling on states to implement and integrate the

inter-state cooperative machinery already in place to address a host of

transnational crimes. e United Nations itself has an entire oce, the

United Nations Oce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), whose remit is

largely to help national authorities deal with the scale of the problems

and the various barriers to cooperation among themselves. More locally,

both Canada and the United States have begun to address a particularly

pernicious form of transnational activity, c ybercrime, as a national securit y

threat instead of as simply a criminal enforcement problem.

 Pedro Cardoso et al, “Scientists’ warning to humanity on illegal or unsustainable

wildlife trade” ()  Biological Conservation .

 Robert J. Currie, review of Legal Responses to Transnational and International Crimes:

Toward an Integrative Approach, by Harmen van der W ilt & Christophe Paulussen,

eds ()  New Zealand Yearbook of International Law  at .

 UNSC Res  ( July ).

 See, for example, Alex Boutilier, “Canadian Spy Agency Targeted Foreign Hackers

to ‘Impose a Cost’ for Cybercrime” Global News ( December ), online: https://

globalnews.ca/news//canadian-spy-agency-targets-cybercrime. And for

an accessible overview, see John Wilson, “Transnational Crime” in Alexander