The strength of this casebook is the uniformity of each chapter's structure, which makes it easier to approach the chapter's topic systematically. Each chapter begins with several sections that discuss the applicable law, followed by a separate section that discusses the Model Penal Code's approach to the topic. This is then followed by a "Comparative Perspectives" section that encourages students to think about alternative ways of approaching the topic. The richness of the comparative materials used in the casebook is unmatched by its competitors, as many of the materials have been translated by the author. Finally, each chapter ends with a section titled "Scholarly Debates" that introduces the student to some of the philosophical discussions related to the topic.

Providing a complete view of U.S. legal principles, this book addresses distinct issues as well as the overlays and connections between them. It presents as a cohesive whole the interrelationships between constitutional principles, statutory criminal laws, procedural law, and common-law evidentiary doctrines. This fully revised and updated new edition also includes discussion questions and hypothetical scenarios to check learning. Constitutional principles are the foundation upon which substantive criminal law, criminal procedure law, and evidence laws rely. The concepts of due process, legality, specificity, notice, equality, and fairness are intrinsic to these three disciplines, and a firm understanding of their implications is necessary for a thorough comprehension of the topic. This book examines the tensions produced by balancing the ideals of individual liberty embodied in the Constitution against society’s need to enforce criminal laws as a means of achieving social control, order, and safety. Relying on his first-hand experience as a law enforcement official and criminal defense attorney, the author presents issues that highlight the difficulties in applying constitutional principles to specific criminal justice situations. Each chapter of the text contains a realistic problem in the form of a fact pattern that focuses on one or more classic criminal justice issues to which readers can relate. These problems are presented from the points of view of citizens caught up in a police investigation and of police officers attempting to enforce the law within the framework of constitutional protections. This book is ideal for courses in criminal law and procedure that seek to focus on the philosophical underpinnings of the system.

Premised on the belief that criminal law is an exciting subject to learn and teach, this popular casebook provides a balanced and creative overview of classic and modern criminal law cases and issues while covering both common law foundations and modern statutory reform, including the Model Penal Code. The casebook invites classroom consideration of many controversies in the field (e.g., rape law, race-based jury nullification, Internet crime, and anti-stalking legislation) and defenses (e.g., battered women?s self-defense). Using imaginative examples from literature and music to illustrate criminal law issues (e.g., examining insanity with Edgar Allen Poe?s The Tell-Tale Heart and homicide with Willa Cather?s O Pioneers!), the casebook allows law students to confront some of the Big Questions with which philosophers, theologians, scientists, poets, and lawyers have grappled for centuries.

The 2008 eighth edition of Cases and Comments on Criminal Law continues the format of subject-matter structure that was introduced several editions before and has proven successful and eminently workable in the classroom. At the same time, the eighth edition strikes several new themes designed to modernize the book and make it more meaningful in today's justice system as well as more accessible to the students. Some older cases have been removed and new cases added to address conceptual issues in a contemporary setting. For example, the 7th and 8th editions have added thirteen new cases to Chapter 2 (four in the 8th edition) including recent United States Supreme Court decisions that have impressed themselves onto the national legal framework.The Notes and Questions have been updated where desirable to reflect variations on the principal cases in modern factual circumstances. Additionally, problems (with citations to the cases they reflect) have been added to the Notes to permit exploration of conceptual nuances in a context less directive than case analysis.Most importantly, in the 8th edition we have added a new chapter on "Crimes Against Governmental Authority." Although the impetus for this chapter was provided by the government's response to the recent terrorist threat, the chapter covers how the state historically has dealt with both physical and sociopolitical challenges to its authority and the welfare of its citizens. After a brief history of governmental acts to defend itself, beginning with sedition at the end of the 18th Century, the chapter covers how traditional crimes have been used by the state in this capacity, and then takes up statutes that have been enacted explicitly to deal with threats to governmental authority, such as crimes aimed at communism, the USA PATRIOT Act, and at material support of terrorist organizations. We have developed this chapter to provide a contemporary setting for showing how the criminal law is utilized to combat threats in a nontraditional area of the first-year course of criminal law, and we hope it appeals to those who prefer both the contemporary and the nontraditional. As in the past, our book starts with a brief outline of criminal procedure. We believe it essential that a beginning student have an insight into the criminal justice process as a prerequisite to a proper understanding of the cases on substantive criminal law. As in prior editions, the book ends with an Appendix containing pertinent provisions of the United States Constitution and its Amendments. Since these provisions are liberally referred to in many cases, the student has ready access to their precise wording.

After defining the constitutional framework for administration, the casebook discusses related topics such as downsizing government, regulators' thirst for information and the Paperwork Reduction Act, Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns, Freedom of Information Act, and the future of the administrative state. Author forum available at twen.com. A premium Teacher's Manual is available upon request for professors adopting this casebook.