Customer Reviews

Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (American Casebook Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Do yourself a favor...if you are assigned this textbook go ahead and buy the Black Letter Outline series by Dressler even if you don't use it until closer to finals. It gives you what you need to know and simplifies things so that you don't have to search round and round for it in the textbook. It's unfortunate Dressler feels the need to sell his supplements and as a result has to make his textbook so crappy. And yes, it really IS that bad.

The text is not a good tool for 1Ls to learn crim law by itself. Most of my classmates and I found the text to be poorly organized and written - especially for those just trying to grasp the intricacies of crim law. Probably a better book for studying statutory interpretation or philosophy of crim law. Prepare to become intimate with the MPC if you are assigned this text. I highly recomend a companion book for the text, one keyed to it such as Blackletter outline by Dressler or the Understanding Crim Law companion by Dressler. I used both and they saved me from utter confusion.

It is a shame that professors force their students to shell out big bucks to buy casebooks that don't help.

Even if you scored high on your LSAT and you have great reading comprehension, you will spend hours deciphering Dressler's philisophical babble. And when you finish your reading, you will realize that you retained little or nothing.

This is because Dressler does not clearly state the important concepts and conflicts of Criminal Law. He circumvents the important information that Criminal Law students need to know, and can only help to learn this information through inference. It's a glorified and expensive game of "hide the ball."

The overwhelming majority of students are confused by the book and the more successful students are those who avoid it entirely.

If you are forced to buy this book, I recommend reading only what is necessary to get by in class and learn Criminal Law through a hornbook, outline, or other method.

I'm a 2L now, but I wanted to stop by and give my thoughts on this horrible book. There is entirely too much philosophy, as others have said. For the reviewer below, I don't want to offend you but most of us aren't in law school to spend long hours pondering over why we punish criminals. I just want to know the black letter law so that I can take an exam, score well, and hopefully get a decent job out of law school. This book is not helpful in any of the above.

I couldn't believe some of the stuff I read in this book. More often than not, I found myself asking what place any of this stuff had in a Criminal Law text. You'll see what I mean when you start reading. Much of Dressler's "teaching material" consists glorified fables and short stories which really have only a tangential relation to the subject matter. I especially enjoyed his excerpt from Willa Cather's "O Pioneers." I nearly dropped my book in amazment after coming across that one.

This legal textbook is decent but not outstanding. I agree with some of the other reviewers that there is a good deal of philosophy of criminal law in this book, such as a section on why we punish (e.g. utilitarian vs. retributivist). However, I scored this book higher because I thought an inquiry into what the basis of punishment is was interesting. I agree, it won't have a place in every crim law class. But with the right professor, it is very interesting to debate why we punish. After all, if you don't know why you have the foundation you claim to have (or worse, don't know what foundation is used) it is very difficulty to resolve tough abstract legal questions of punishment.

On a more practical level, the book works well I think. The editing of cases it presents is reasonable and it is structured in a largely logical manner. In between cases, like most law textbooks, it has questions and comments that are generally more helpful than most other similar sections of law books.

Overall, the reason this book gets 4 stars instead of 3 is because it cites several other sources of law that, if you are somehow able to go read (what law school gives you free time??) are very interesting. My favorite such cite is to CS Lewis in the philosophy of punishment section.

Came in 2 days, good as described; very satisfied