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 t he same

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

ible cat alogue of the authority that is most frequently needed in the

conduct of tr ials or heari ngs. We are pleased that t his 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 ev idence, we have chosen to re-

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

itions or statements of l aw can be found italicized t hroughout the text

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

will occasionally be controversy over the proper statement of rules of

law a nd that t he law of evidence has proven pa rticularly resistant to

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

at stating the law in clear ter ms c an be of value to both students and

practitioners by simplify ing and focusing the discussion. Where major

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

many examples in an ef fort to illustrate the operation of the r ules.

In this sixth edition, we h ave adhered to the organizational plan

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

law of evidence are introduced i n chapter 1. The introduction supplies

an opportunity to describe genera lly the function of the law of evide nce,

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

foundational material that should a ssist in understanding the discus -

sions contained in the mai n body of the work.