Criminal Law: Doctrine, Application, and Practice, Fourth Edition

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Jens Ohlin’s Criminal Law is designed to respond to the changing nature of law teaching by offering a shorter, flexible, and more doctrinal approach, with an emphasis on application. Materials are presented, in a visually lively style, via a consistently structured pedagogy within each chapter: Doctrine (treatise-like explanation), Application (cases), and Practice/Policy (questions providing an opportunity for normative critique of the law and exploration of practical and strategic challenges facing criminal lawyers). Theory is integrated into the doctrine section rather than conveyed through law review excerpts, so as to help students make the necessary connections to doctrinal issues. Aggressively-edited cases help keep the length to a minimum, and modern cases will engage younger students and professors.

New to the Fourth Edition:

Completely reconfigured chapter on accomplice liability:
- Streamlined discussion of the required mens rea and different cases for both mens rea and the natural and probable consequences doctrine.
- Relegation of the Rosemond case to the notes.
- Relegation of advanced aspects of the doctrine to the notes.
- The chapter is reconfigured to acknowledge statutory changes in California sharply limiting the natural and probable consequences doctrine in homicide cases.
Changes in the chapter on manslaughter, especially the jurisdictional split on recklessness versus negligence as the required mental element for involuntary manslaughter, with a cataloguing of the required mens rea in each state.
Re-edited Norman case in the Self-Defense chapter to enhance teachability.
New material in the Act Requirement chapter dealing with addiction/intoxication and homelessness as status crimes.

Benefits for instructors and students:

Structure and content which line up with how professors actually teach the course, as opposed to how the course was taught a generation ago
Integrated notes throughout the casebook, directing students to view a series of 20 short video clips that bring the doctrinal controversies to life in a fictional courtroom
Shorter-than-average casebook length, helping to make it more manageable for professors with reduced course hours
Brief chapters, each focusing on a single doctrine
Innovative pedagogy emphasizing application of law to facts (while still retaining enough flexibility so as to be useful for a variety of professors with different teaching styles)
Theory interwoven into doctrine materials (rather than rigorous law review excerpts)
New, fresh, tightly-edited cases
Post-case notes and questions to invite closer examination of doctrine/application and to generate class discussion
“Problem Case” boxes (featuring high-profile cases and which include discussion questions)
Hypotheticals
“Afterward” boxes (following some cases)
“Advice” boxes
“Practice and Policy” sections in each chapter, urging students to consider how the various actors in the process (prosecutors, defense counsel, judges and juries) make particular decisions and the strategic calculations that informed them, and make this casebook more practice-ready than others
Open, two-color design with appealing visual elements (including carefully-selected photographs)