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

Authors
  • Jens David Ohlin
Series / Aspen Casebook Series
Teaching Materials
NO
Description
Table of contents

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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)
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Summary of Contents

Table of Contents 
Preface 
Acknowledgments


PART I
BASIC ELEMENTS OF CRIMINALITY

CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Criminal Process 
CHAPTER 2
Punishment 
CHAPTER 3
The Death Penalty
CHAPTER 4
Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law 
CHAPTER 5
Act Requirement 
CHAPTER 6
Mental States 
CHAPTER 7
Mistakes 
CHAPTER 8
Causation

PART II
OFFENSES 

CHAPTER 9
Intentional Murder 
CHAPTER 10
Voluntary Manslaughter 
CHAPTER 11
Reckless Killings 
CHAPTER 12
Felony Murder 
CHAPTER 13
Negligent Homicide 
CHAPTER 14
Rape 
CHAPTER 15
Other Offenses Against the Person 
CHAPTER 16
Theft & Property Offenses 

PART III
INCHOATE OFFENSES 

CHAPTER 17
Offenses Against the Administration of Justice
CHAPTER 18
Attempt 
CHAPTER 19
Inchoate Conspiracy 
CHAPTER 20
Solicitation 

PART IV
MODES OF LIABILITY 

CHAPTER 21
Accomplices 
CHAPTER 22
Conspiracy Liability 
CHAPTER 23
Corporate Crime 

PART V
JUSTIFICATIONS & EXCUSES

CHAPTER 24
Self- Defense 
CHAPTER 25
Defensive Force by Police Officers 
CHAPTER 26
Necessity
CHAPTER 27
Duress 
CHAPTER 28
Intoxication 
CHAPTER 29
Insanity 

Appendix: Model Penal Code
Table of Cases
Index 
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Professor Materials
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Product Information
Edition
Fourth Edition
Publication date
2024-10-29
Copyright Year
2025
Pages
1018
Connected eBook with Study Center + Hardcover
9798892073394
Connected eBook with Study Center (Digital Only)
9798892073400
Subject
Criminal Law
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