Criminal Law Hornbooks ( 5th Updated Edition ) Major emphasis is placed on the basic premises of criminal law, including its sources and general limitations. This Hornbook provides detailed discussion on the topics of responsibility, justification and excuse, inchoate crimes, accomplice, and liability. Attention is also given to subjects such as causation, insanity, and conspiracy.
First of all, this book is aesthetically beautiful which is what made me look at it in the first place. But way more importantly, it is excellent for covering everything you need to know for a criminal law course. A lot of students are drawn away from this book and other hornbooks because they are almost the same size as a casebook. Even though its longer and bigger than a glannons or E+E, it covers every subject you will go over in your 1L crim law class. It also gives you the big picture about the revolution of a law, the policy reasons behind it, elements of a rule, factors the court look at, etc. If you have any question about something in class, this book will probably have an answer for you. Another thing that is very useful is that the book does a good job at distinguishing the common law vs. MPC and statutory differences for rules. Since criminal law is such a statutory based subject, sometimes it is difficult to know what rule to use or how to find the majority or minority views, but this book will let you know all of it. I highly recommend it especially if you are interested in going into criminal law or want to know more about it.
Wow, this book is incredible. Dense? Yes. Difficult and overwhelming? Of course. But it is the most effective and most authoritative book on crim law for a first year law student out there. I read Understanding Criminal Law by Dressler (which probably was the best decision seeing as Dressler wrote my case book) throughout the semester and had a decently solid grasp on the material. But I was by no means confident going into the exam. I picked this hornbook up about four days before the final and literally only studied this while looking at class notes and previous exams sparingly. I was immersed in LaFave's writing and evident mastery of the subject. Some people shy away from the hornbook's heavy in citations and indeed, this one has some pages that are almost entirely citations, but those type of real examples of cases are what help me understand the topics.
After completing the exam I felt awful. I thought reviewing almost exclusively with this hornbook was a terrible idea because my review also encompassed a lot of relearning that could have been better spent looking over the notes and cases I already had instead of typing up new ones into my outline. Man, was I wrong. I got several key ideas from this book that I inserted into my outline when taking the exam and I ended up finishing in the top 10% of this class. Keep in mind, crim was a class I struggled with the entire time. Simply put, this book was a game changer and I highly recommend it to be used as a primer during the semester or just when reviewing for finals like I did. It is no substitute for keeping up with the class material but there is nobody better than LaFave when it comes to crim and it is always helpful to learn from the best.
Product Details :
- Series: Hornbook Series
- Hardcover: 1328 pages
- Publisher: West Academic Publishing; 5th Updated edition (March 18, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0314912681
- ISBN-13: 978-0314912688
- Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.7 x 1.9 inches
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