2. Foreign and International Impacts on Criminal Justice

Aside from the extra-territorial applicability of the criminal law, the criminal law is domestically prone to many international and transnational influences. This means that for example in Canada, criminal justice is not simply the province of Parliament and the court system. Canada is a party to international human rights as well as international criminal law treaties that impose a number of obligations on it. Moreover, powerful forces of regionalization are shaping the criminal law in many countries. Of course, the susceptibility to such influences will vary depending on the degree to which a state is legally open to outside influences and, for example, comes under the jurisdictional of supranational bodies. Canada has been a bit of an outlier internationally in terms of implementing some of its international human rights obligations into domestic law, or even in interpreting the criminal law to conform to international norms. Nonetheless, with the globalization of crime undeniably comes a globalization of the response to crime and it is increasingly difficult to ignore the pull of transnational and international sources on the criminal law.

Further Readings:

• • M.A.B., W.A.T. and J.-A.Y.T. v. Canada, Communication No. 570/1993, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/50/D/570/1993 (1994).

  • Harvie, Robert, and Hamar Foster. “Ties That Bind: The Supreme Court of Canada, American Jurisprudence, and the Revision of Canadian Criminal Law under the Charter.” Osgoode Hall LJ 28 (1990): 729.

  • Slaughter, Anne-Marie, and William Burke-White. “Future of International Law Is Domestic (Or, the European Way of Law), The.” Harv. Int’l LJ 47 (2006): 327

  • Muncie, John. “The Globalization of Crime Control—the Case of Youth and Juvenile Justice Neo-Liberalism, Policy Convergence and International Conventions.” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 1 (2005): 35–64.

  • ZAPATERO, Luis ARROYO. “L’harmonisation internationale du droit pénal” (2011) 3 Revue de science criminelle et de droit pénal comparé 557 (the previous link did not work: you will have to login under Academia to access this article, apologies for the complication).

  • Rehman, Javaid. “The Influence of International Human Rights Law upon Criminal Justice Systems.” The Journal of Criminal Law 66, no. 6 (2002): 510–27.

  • Breton, Albert & Anne Des Ormeaux. Multijuralism: Manifestations, Causes, and Consequences (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013), pages 29-33

  • Kerchove, Michel van de. “Introduction.” Déviance et Société 34, no. 4 (January 6, 2011): 479–82.

  • Dourneau-Josette, Pascal, and Françoise Tulkens. “La défense sociale au regard de la Convention européenne des droits de l’Homme.” Déviance et Société 34, no. 4 (January 6, 2011): 691–706.