Criminal Law: Cases, Controversies and Problems

Joseph E. Kennedy, University of North Carolina School of Law

CasebookPlus™

This title is available in our CasebookPlus format. CasebookPlus provides support beyond your classroom lectures and materials by offering additional digital resources to you and your students. Anchored by faculty-authored formative self-assessments keyed to our most popular casebooks, CasebookPlus allows students to test their understanding of core concepts as they are learning them in class – on their own, outside of the classroom, with no extra work on your part. CasebookPlus combines three important elements:

• A new print or digital casebook
• Access to a downloadable eBook with the ability to highlight and add notes
• 12-month access to a digital Learning Library complete with:

Multiple-choice self-assessment questions, including:

• Chapter questions keyed to the casebook
• Black Letter Law questions (available in select subjects)
• Subject area review questions for end of semester use

Essay and short answer questions with sample answers and expert commentary, in 1L and select upper-level subjects

Leading digital study aids, an outline starter, and audio lectures in select subjects

Students can still utilize CasebookPlus digital resources if they’ve purchased a used book or are renting their text by purchasing the Learning Library at westacademic.com.

With CasebookPlus, you can customize your students’ learning experience and monitor their performance. The quiz editor allows you to create your own custom quiz set, suppress specific quiz questions or quiz sets, and time-release quiz questions. Additionally, the flexible, customized reporting capability helps you evaluate your students’ understanding of the material and can also help your school demonstrate compliance with the new ABA Assessment and Learning Outcomes standards.

Table of Contents

Sample Syllabus

Teacher's Manual – Sample Chapter

Teacher's Manual (Adopter Access Only)

PowerPoint Slides (Adopter Access Only)

Polling and Quiz Question Manual (Adopter Access Only)

Past Exams (Adopter Access Only)

First Edition Teaching Materials (Adopter Access Only)

In addition to the substitution of a few more recent cases and the deletion of a few seldom taught cases, this second edition contains additional food for thought for students who hunger for clearer connections between the criminal law doctrines studied and the wider world in which we live. Now more than ever, students bring this critical edge to their reading of the criminal law, and they need to see critical perspectives integrated into their textbook’s doctrinal discussions.

• A variety of points for discussion have been added in shaded areas that raise various sociological issues, including those of race, class and gender including a brief description of critical theories in the philosophy of punishment chapter.
• Short, shaded sections throughout the book that that raise critical issues using straightforward, non-theoretical language that does not privilege one side or the other.
• Additional background about select cases that provide social and political context and sometimes explain the aftermath of the court’s decision. (These sections are titled “The Rest of the Story.”)
• A series of references to various video clips that can be found online dealing with fictional and real criminal cases for students who crave visual illustrations. (These sections are titled “CrimTube.”)
• Additional practice problems that deal with issues such as collective online delusions (e.g. Q’Anon) and politically motivated violence committed by crowds.

The appendix contains additional materials for more in-depth exercises that focus on various lawyering skills as well as a set of “rules of the road” for classroom discussions of hot button issues.

• A sentencing template for a plea bargaining exercise that can be used with any of the many homicide practice problems.
• Excerpts from the journal of James Holmes, the “Dark Knight” shooter who killed and wounded multiple people in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado. The excerpts describe some of his schizophrenic delusions and provide the basis for a variety of possible classroom exercises.
• Witness statements and 911 transcripts from a “stand your ground” self defense case that can serve as the basis for an exercise in fact investigation.
• A play about the legal proceedings in the Vincent Chin case. Vincent Chin was a Chinese American man beaten to death in a racially motivated assault. His case energized the Asian American Civil rights movement. The play includes excerpts from the trial and other court proceedings.
• A short story about a possible case of self defense that provides the basis for a useful exercise exploring the ethics of witness preparation.

Learn more about this series.