Modern Constitutional Law: Cases, Problems and Practice, Third Edition

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The new and revised third edition of Friedman’s Modern Constitutional Law includes the major recent cases from the Supreme Court concerning individual rights and separation of powers, integrating discussion of these cases into the book’s practical approach to understanding the Court’s constitutional jurisprudence. 

Unlike casebooks that seek to tackle the entirety of Constitutional Law and are organized from the theoretical and philosophical perspective of the constitutional scholar Modern Constitutional Law: Cases, Problems and Practice focuses on the key areas most relevant to the practice law students will predominantly find themselves in after law school: small or solo firms that count individuals and small businesses as their clientele, offices of state agencies, district attorneys, and public defenders.

New to the Third Edition:

• Updated with cases from the most recent Supreme Court term addressing the right to bear arms, the right to choose, and the free exercise of religion
• Updated practice perspectives that reflect changes in the law
• Updated with the most recent cases concerning free speech, separation of powers, and standing

Professors and students will benefit from:

• Narrower in scope than other casebooks, the book is more manageable for 3- and 4- credit courses 
• A focus on doctrine rather than theory
• An emphasis on modern and contemporary approaches to constitutional law, while including landmark cases, such as McCulloch v. Maryland, The Prize Cases, and Lochner v. New York
• Coverage focuses on the areas of constitutional law students are likely to encounter upon graduation, such as due process, equal protection, as well as free speech and the free exercise of religion
• Inclusion of cases from the lower federal and state courts, courts in which most students are most likely to one day find themselves litigating constitutional issues
• Inclusion of a generous case excerpts to help students to develop their ability to read legal texts closely and extract useful information, rather than relying on Notes to cover the jurisprudence in a particular area 
• Each chapter includes one or more Problems to provide students opportunities to apply the doctrines learned
• Each chapter includes one or more “Practice Perspectives” that present the facts, background, and resolution of actual constitutional law cases, challenging students to explain the results based on what they have learned in the chapter