Criminal Law and Its Processes: Cases and Materials

by Sanford H. Kadish, Stephen J. Schulhofer

This carefully updated revision of Kadish and Schulhofer's classic casebook on substantive criminal law retains the same interdisciplinary material, sharp analysis, and provocative questions that have made it the bestselling book in the field for more than 25 years.

Genres: Law, Textbooks, Nonfiction, Legal, School

1232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Rhodes]

literally no explanation about what anything is followed by confusing opinions about the thing that wasn’t explained.

[Kasey D]

I didn’t like it. It felt disorganized, and it was a mile wide and an inch deep. If at the end of the day all jurisdictions are so different, I would’ve rather just learned about federal law or just studied MN criminal statutes as a case study???

[Camryn]

I read every page of this book and I WILL get credit for it

[Grace]

It probably could be better. It’s honestly very readable but it doesn’t rly teach you coherently

[mz]

Although the voluminous notes and cases likely provide an apt view of the schizophrenic Anglo-American criminal law, I would have appreciated some better exposition of unifying themes.

[Ke]

I found this book comprehensive and for the most part clear. The authors also selected interesting cases (e.g. bacon side-petty thief Hayes, page 693). Maybe my only quibble is that the authors seemed to be flogging their own research. It is understandable that they would include their work (you write what you know), but I found that the book's coverage of material weighed unusually on the authors' side. Maybe the authors could have included more work by their critics.

[Charles McGonigal]

Terrible textbook. But at least the lead author got to excerpt himself a lot - that must have been nice.

[Michael I]

This textbook doesn't even try to hide how biased it is against the criminal justice system.

"Politically conservative, affluent white males were likely to feel strongly that Harris was much more at fault than the police....In contrast, politically liberal and well-educated but less affluent individuals, especially African Americans and women were much more likely to believe that Harris and the police were about equally at fault".

The authors conveniently left out that people in the Northeast were less likely as well. I guess it doesn't fit the clean line between conservative, rich, white men (presumably the villains) and well-educated liberal women and minorities.

Also, if I have to read one more leading rhetorical question, I swear...

"Is Justice *** right to suggest that severe economic deprivation and structural racism do not undermine society's moral right to to inflict punishment. That environmental circumstances do not undermine the personal responsibility of people who commit certain (for example, nonviolent) crimes? That workable lines cannot be drawn?"

I love how wealthy city lawyers who live in penthouses and send their kids to private schools can lecture about how criminals are really just victims of society. It's easy to preach from the top of society...

[Logan]

Extremely frustrating for a 1L student to follow, as the mind-blind authors skip over any substantive explanations and go right into the philosophy and academic commentary of the issues. This is awesome, except for the fact the only folks who care about philosophy and academic commentary of legal concepts are philosophers and and academia commentators. In this book, there may be more interrogative statements than declaratory. In outlining for class, I took 30,000 words of notes for the exam based on the book. I deleted the document because it was so useless for a Criminal Law exam.

But at least I know about what Kadish thinks about Benthem's argument of the Utilitarian view of retribution punishment. Who cares. What is a Burglary? I still don't know.

[Danny]

First case: In re Winship 08/26/22

Final case: People v. Goetz 11/18/22

[SK]

Dostoevsky did it better.

[emily]

yeah I’m counting this bc I literally had to read every single page

[Josie Wu]

policy reviews seemed a little one-sided

[ash]

DONE WITH CRIM 🙏🏻

[Bella DeFeo]

mama im in love with a criminal (luigi mangione)

[Kenny]

RIP my fun tbr

[Arianna Laufer]

enjoyed crim, this book was great tbh - nothing but good comments for it all around

[W]

Unnecessarily confusing. Crim Law is just a mess.

[Lisa M]

A great introduction to criminal law

[Edward]

I read portions of this book for professor Bonventre's Criminal Law class at Albany Law school.

The book was a pleasure to read and gives a thorough account of the criminal process. The instruction I received focused mostly on the theories behind the criminal process. It was presented in a manner that made criminal law look very grey as opposed to the black and white structure of guilty or not guilty which was a very interesting thing.

[sambo]

i learned that as an immigrant from a foreign land, if i ever commit a specific intent crime, i can raise a cultural defense to negate the requisite mens rea.

[Mathew]

so many good things

[Meredith]

People do the most unusual things. And then, sometimes, they go to prison for doing so.

[Sara]

Actually one of the better law books because it's not just case law, but it talks about legal theories and different schools of thought along with the progression of the law.

[Hannah]

We didn't use the book much in class.

[Sarah]

Interesting cases, but very dense and thin-paged (bad match for highlighters!).

[Kate]

Murder and manslaughter and rape, oh my!

[Elizabeth Pyjov]

I would seriously read portions of this for pleasure - the philosophy of it is so good.

[Annie]

Pretty good casebook. For, you know, a casebook.