LaFave and Ohlin's Criminal Law, 7th Edition is designed to function as the ideal Hornbook resource for the student studying Criminal Law. The book includes comprehensive treatment of all doctrines covered in the basic first-year Criminal Law course, regardless of which textbook the instructor uses. The materials are flexible and not keyed to a specific casebook. Doctrines are carefully explained and are thus ideal for out-of-class study to supplement more discussion-oriented casebook materials.
Core topics of the Hornbook include:
- The underlying goals and purposes of the criminal law, including tensions between crime control and due process
- Principles of statutory interpretation relevant to penal statutes
- The competing rationales for criminal punishment, constitutional constraints related to sentencing, especially as regards to capital punishment and sentencing guidelines, and mental competency to stand trial
- A comprehensive treatment of substantive crimes, not just "core crimes" such as all forms of homicide and sexual assault, but also all substantive offenses tested on the bar exam, including assault, battery, theft, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and arson, and any other offense that might be included on a Criminal Law syllabus, including disorderly conduct, trespassing, and harassment
- Modes of liability, including not just accomplice and conspiracy liability, but also solicitation and felony murder. The materials explore recent changes to the law in this area, including California's repeal of the felony murder rule
- Inchoate offenses, including not just attempts, but also solicitation and conspiracy as inchoate substantive offenses
- Doctrinal coverage of every justification and excuse, including self-defense, defensive force by police officers, necessity, duress, and insanity-including the competing doctrines for evaluating insanity arguments, and partial defenses such as diminished capacity
LaFave and Ohlin's treatment of the Criminal Law is so comprehensive that students are urged to keep the textbook for bar exam study and for initial practice as a criminal lawyer, since the Hornbook is useful as an easy-to-consult, one-volume, practice-ready reference work.
