Customer Reviews

Currie's Federal Jurisdiction in a Nutshell, 4th (In a Nutshell (West Publishing))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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I'm not a big commercial outline user--I only used them in two classes during law school--Civil Procedure (Examples and Explanations) and Federal Courts. My professor was an old U. Chi. grad, and had Currie for Federal Courts when he was in law school, so he liked this book and it tracked our class discussions pretty well. Currie's writing is clear, and TO THE POINT. That's one thing I liked best about this one. I would recommend it over Chemerinsky's Federal Jurisdiction, which I also looked at. Federal Jurisdiction has more detail (in terms of particular case discussion) but I didn't think it had much more substance (at least what law students need and can comprehend) than Currie's Nutshell. This is one I recommend.

Every aspect of this book is excellent - at least for my purposes (law student in Fed. Courts class). If I could only buy one supplement, this would be it, A+.

The book is incredibly easy to read and understand. I'm pretty sure it does not contain the level of detail a practioner requires, but it covers all the standard Fed Cts topics, albeit briefly. And brief is not bad, actually "concise" is probably a better description. I brought this book on a plane and was able to read it straight though in about 2 hours (of course this was just a "first-pass" read). Another PRO: it's tiny, so easy to carry around.

Now I'm going through it more carefully to outline. It's great for outlining because it not only gives you a clear statement of the rule, but also lists the exceptions to the rule and a little on the underlying policy justification (which, as sure you know, tends to more important in this type of class where there are many ambiguities). My class uses the standard H&W casebook, I use this book to outline and Chemerinsky's Federal Jurisdiction to fill in any blanks.