Editors' Note

In this special issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal, we publish the papers presented at a conference on Constitutionalism and the Criminal Law. The conference and volume are the outcome of a research group of legal scholars from Canada, the United States, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Israel, who came together twice, in Israel and in Canada, to discuss the relationship between criminal law and constitutional law. The articles in this issue address different aspects of this relationship on two levels, doctrinal and jurisprudential, often combining the two.

The interrelationship of constitutional law and criminal law has become a source of growing interest in recent years. Constitutional courts in Canada, Germany, and Israel, to name a few known examples, have faced the question whether substantive criminal law principles that belong to the General Part, such as mens rea and actus reus, are constitutionally mandated. In a similar vein, courts have considered the limits of criminalization and the constitutionality of specific criminal prohibitions of the Special Part, such as moral offences. Even more prevalent in some jurisdictions has been the constitutional scrutiny of criminal law procedures. Articles in this issue address some of these familiar questions of substantive and procedural criminal law in new ways, and several go beyond current cases to explore the constitutional grounds of justifications and excuses.

At stake in this issue, however, is not only a careful study of the application in different legal systems of constitutional safeguards to criminal law doctrine. The authors, more or less explicitly, are also concerned with the relationship of criminal law to constitutional law as a jurisprudential question. Constitutional law, in this context, stands for something quite different than constitutional doctrine and signifies the underlying jurisprudential and political foundations of criminal law. Some of the questions which are addressed in the following pages include what are criminal law's assumptions about the legitimate use of coercive force? what bearing does the constitution of the political and legal community have to criminal law? what commitment does criminal law have to the rule of law? and how should exceptions to the rule of law be understood and justified?

The first part of the conference was generously supported by the Taubenschlag Institute of Criminal Law of the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. The second part of the conference could not have taken place without the generosity of Professor Alan Brudner and the support of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Publication of the proceedings was made possible by the generosity of three Toronto law firms: Torys LLP, Greenspan Humphrey Lavine LLP, and Brauti Thorning Zibarras LLP. We would also like to thank Galia Scheebaum for her help at both stages of the conference and the discussants who commented on the papers during the sessions in Toronto: Amar Bhatia, Galia Scheebaum, Kimberley Petrie, and Zoe Sinel. We also thank Aaron McMaster for his assistance in preparing the papers for copy-editing. The editor of this journal, Professor Karen Knop, as well as several anonymous readers, provided invaluable assistance during the editorial process.