Preface to the first edition

• Author: John H. Currie
• Pages: 19-20

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PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION

The f‌ield of public international law is vast, comprising an ent ire legal

system governing the rights and obligations of st ates in their relations

with one another and, increasingly, with non-state actors. The area has

undergone explosive growth in the past half-century and so, accord-

ingly, has its pervasive inf‌luence on international relations and domes-

tic legal systems alike. Canada in particular has been a leader in thi s

area such that, today, there is virtually no aspect of Ca nadian law that

has not in some way or another been inf‌luenced by international law.

Internation al law has therefore cea sed to be a n arcane and specialized

topic, of interest only to a small group of academics and lawyers in

government practice. It has entered the legal mainstream and yet is still

little known by many pract itioners, judges, and students.

This book is therefore intended as a systematic introduction to this

complex and increasingly import ant area of the law. It describe s and

places i n context the fundamental elements of the international legal

sys tem — the subjects of intern ational law, its key institutional struc-

tures, its sources, its i nteraction w ith domestic legal systems — and

reviews some of its most important substantive topics — including the

law of treaties, the relat ionship between states and territory, the law of

the sea, state jurisdiction and jurisdictional immunities, international

human rights law, and the fundamental rules of state responsibility.

While the sheer re ach and diversity of modern intern ational law place

an exhaus tive treatment of every one of its numerous substantive topics

beyond the scope of this introductory text, the contents of this book

have been cho sen for their fund amental importa nce to an understand-

ing of interna tional law more generally a nd to further study in spe-