Criminal practice demands of new advocates a daunting array of skills. They must be interviewers, investigators, counselors, researchers, scribes, planners, negotiators, ethicists, strategists, and courtroom protectors of truth, justice, and the oppressed. Mastering these many skills takes time, a luxury the system too rarely affords. Here between two covers is a wise and readable guide to all facets of a new advocate's role. More than a trial-practice manual, this handbook looks beneath a lawyer's public duties to the preparation and planning that lead to courtroom success. And it gives both prosecutors and defenders an insider's view of their counterparts' roles, lending insights that build both effectiveness and mutual respect.

This handbook explores criminal law systems from around the world, with the express aim of stimulating comparison and discussion. General principles of criminal liability receive prominent coverage in each essay—including discussions of rationales for punishment, the role and design of criminal codes, the general structure of criminal liability, accounts of mens rea, and the rights that criminal law is designed to protect—before the authors turn to more specific offenses like homicide, theft, sexual offenses, victimless crimes, and terrorism. This key reference covers all of the world's major legal systems—common, civil, Asian, and Islamic law traditions—with essays on sixteen countries on six different continents. The introduction places each country within traditional distinctions among legal systems and explores noteworthy similarities and differences among the countries covered, providing an ideal entry into the fascinating range of criminal law systems in use the world over.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law reflects the continued transformation of criminal law into a global discipline, providing scholars with a comprehensive international resource, a common point of entry into cutting edge contemporary research and a snapshot of the state and scope of the field. To this end, the Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter, disciplinarily, geographically, and systematically. Its contributors include current and future research leaders representing a variety of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise, and research agendas. The Handbook is divided into four parts: Approaches & Methods (I), Systems & Methods (II), Aspects & Issues (III), and Contexts & Comparisons (IV). Part I includes essays exploring various methodological approaches to criminal law (such as criminology, feminist studies, and history). Part II provides an overview of systems or models of criminal law, laying the foundation for further inquiry into specific conceptions of criminal law as well as for comparative analysis (such as Islamic, Marxist, and military law). Part III covers the three aspects of the penal process: the definition of norms and principles of liability (substantive criminal law), along with a less detailed treatment of the imposition of norms (criminal procedure) and the infliction of sanctions (prison law). Contributors consider the basic topics traditionally addressed in scholarship on the general and special parts of the substantive criminal law (such as jurisdiction, mens rea, justifications, and excuses). Part IV places criminal law in context, both domestically and transnationally, by exploring the contrasts between criminal law and other species of law and state power and by investigating criminal law's place in the projects of comparative law, transnational, and international law.

This title contains 17 original essays by leading thinkers in the field and covers the field's major topics including limits to criminalization, obscenity and hate speech, blackmail, the law of rape, attempts, accomplice liability, causation responsibility, justification and excuse, duress, and more.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Process surveys the topics and issues in the field of criminal process, including the laws, institutions, and practices of the criminal justice administration. The process begins with arrests or with crime investigation such as searches for evidence. It continues through trial or some alternative form of adjudication such as plea bargaining that may lead to conviction and punishment, and it includes post-conviction events such as appeals and various procedures for addressing miscarriages of justice. Across more than 40 chapters, this Handbook provides a descriptive overview of the subject sufficient to serve as a durable reference source, and more importantly to offer contemporary critical or analytical perspectives on those subjects by leading scholars in the field. Topics covered include history, procedure, investigation, prosecution, evidence, adjudication, and appeal.