Preface to the second edition

• Author: Steve Coughlan
• Pages: 17-17

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PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

One of my colleagues argues that an advantage of teaching in this f‌ield

is that one can use the same exam problems from year to year, because

the correct answer keeps changing. Certainly the developments of the

more than three years since the f‌irst edition of this book appeared give

support to his claim. No chapter is unaffected.

These effects include signif‌icant new decisions with regard to

arbitrary detention, search and seizure (particularly in relation to

reasonable expectation of privacy and to the manner of searches, but

extending beyond that), disclosure, national security privilege, trial

within a reasonable time, and right to counsel. They also include other

changes of a less dramatic nature, in areas such as prosecutorial di scre-

tion, abuse of process, publication bans, private prosecutions, miscarr i-

ages of justice or errors of law, severance of charges, closing arguments

to the jury, and many others. In some cases these developments have

brought welcome clarity to areas of law which had long needed it; in

other cases the deci sions have injected ambiguity where it did not seem

to exist before. Others have merely elaborated upon aspects of the law

which had not been entirely articulated. Consideration of all of those

types of developments in th is second edition is current to January 2012.

Steve Coughlan

Halifax