The criminal justice system aims to maintain a balance between the individual interest of private citizens to carry on their lives free from state interference, and the communal interest in maintaining a safe society. These two goals come into conflict with each other most visibly when agents of the state physically take control of private citizens — that is, when they exercise their powers to detain or to arrest.

The book focuses on “street-level” encounters: detentions and arrests that occur in the course of investigating crime and laying charges. The authors explore the initial interaction between agents of the state or others authorized to detain and arrest, and the private citizens whose liberty is interfered with. It is at that point that the balance between societal safety and individual liberty is most keenly in play.

Powers of detention and arrest are discussed from the perspective of their three sources: statutes, the common law, and the Charter.

Steve Coughlan is a professor of law and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University in Halifax. He received an LL.B. from Dalhousie Law School and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, both in 1985. He has practised law with the Metro Community Law Clinic and with the Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, and also worked with the criminal procedure project of the Law Reform Commission of Canada. Having worked at Dalhousie Law School in a variety of capacities, he was appointed to a tenure-track position in 2000, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001, and became a full Professor in 2004. His areas of teaching have included criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, health law, and appellate advocacy. His students have won many prizes at competitive moots, including first place overall in the Commonwealth Law Moot. Professor Coughlan has received teaching awards at the faculty, university, and regional levels, including the Dalhousie Law School Teaching Excellence Award, the Hannah and Harold Barnett Award for Excellence in Teaching First Year Law, the Dalhousie University Alumni Association Award of Excellence for Teaching, and the Association of Atlantic Universities Distinguished Teacher Award.

  Professor Coughlan is the author of Detention and Arrest (with Glen Luther, Irwin Law, 2010) and Criminal Procedure, 2d ed. (Irwin Law, 2012). He is an editor of the Criminal Reports and an author of the National Judicial Institute Criminal Law e-Letter. He is also a co-author of the Carswell Annual Review of Criminal Law and of Learning Canadian Criminal Law (as of the 10th ed.). In addition, he is a member of the Law and Technology Institute at the Schulich School of Law and is one of the authors of the Canadian IT Law Association’s newsletter on law and technology issues. The majority of his more than 150 articles, annotations, chapters, reports, and books have been in the criminal law field, but he has also published in other fields, including health law (particularly with regard to issues of elder abuse) and the future of the legal profession.

Steve Coughlan's profile page

Glen Luther, Q.C. is an associate professor at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan. He has previously taught at several law schools including Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Calgary, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has extensive criminal litigation experience in Alberta and Saskatchewan and has argued cases at all levels of courts. Professor Luther has received several awards for teaching excellence and in 2009 was appointed Queen’s Counsel by the Government of Saskatchewan.

Glen Luther's profile page