Product Review

This popular casebook, through the selection of classic and modern cases, provides an excellent tool for teaching students the common law foundations of the criminal law and modern statutory reform, including the Model Penal Code. Along the way, the casebook considers modern controversies (e.g., shaming; punishment, rape law, self-defense by battered women, euthanasia, the role of culture in determining culpability), and creatively uses literature (e.g., examining insanity through Edgar Allen Poe's The-Tell Tale Heart) and even brain teasers to confront (as the Preface states) the Big Questions . . . that philosophers, theologians, scientists, and poets, as well as lawyers, have grappled with for centuries.Professor Stephen Garvey (Cornell) joins the casebook beginning with this new edition. The Sixth Edition, as in the past, includes some new cases, as well as updates in the notes that bring current issues of criminal law to the fore.