Criminal Law: An Integrated Approach

Criminal Law: An Integrated Approach is a new textbook designed for a first-year law school course in criminal law. Its aim is to present an accurate overview of American criminal law as it operates in the twenty-first century, with attention to racial disparities and other inequalities and to the features of criminal law that produce these inequalities. The book covers basic principles of criminal liability and introduces students to standard definitions of property crimes, crimes against the person, and drug and gun offenses. Its approach is integrated in that students learn these areas of “substantive” law in context with the official decision-making that is crucial to the operation of criminal law in practice: criminalization, enforcement, and adjudication decisions. By examining the ways in which written texts, such as statutes or judicial opinions, do and do not constrain official decisions, the book offers an opportunity to understand how mass incarceration and patterns of racial disparity have arisen and been sustained.