Preface

• Author: David M. Paciocco/Lee Stuesser
• Profession: Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice/Professor of Law, Bond University
• Pages: 23-24

xxiii

PR EFAC E

This book has been written in an effort to simplify, and record concisely,

the main rules and principles of the law of evidence. It is an attempt to

explain the basic concepts of evidence to the law student. At the same

time, it is an effort to provide the practitioner with a simple and access-

ible catalogue of the authority that is most frequently needed in the

conduct of trials or hearings. We are pleased that this work has been

adapted by the National Judicial Institute as the “bench book” that has

been distributed to judges of all courts across Canada to assist in their

evidentiary rulings.

In an effort to simplify the law of evidence, we have chosen to re-

duce the most important rules into proposition form. These propos-

itions or statements of law can be found italicized throughout the text

above the discussions to which they relate. We are aware that there

will occasionally be controversy over the proper statement of rules of

law and that the law of evidence has proven particularly resistant to

efforts at codif‌ication. We are nonetheless of the view that our efforts

at stating the law in clear terms can be of value to both students and

practitioners by simplifying and focusing the discussion. Where major

controversies exist, we have attempted to note them. We have also used

many examples in an effort to illustrate the operation of the rules.

In this sixth edition, we have adhered to the organizational plan

that we adopted for the f‌irst f‌ive editions. The general concepts of the

law of evidence are introduced in chapter 1. The introduction supplies

an opportunity to describe generally the function of the law of evidence,

to make observations about the trend in recent authority, and to present

foundational material that should assist in understanding the discus-

sions contained in the main body of the work.