Criminal Law: Notable Books in Main Collection

An exhaustive list of the Criminal Law-related titles available in the law library would be - as you can probably imagine - massive and pointless, so instead we at the library have selected a few major titles that run the gamut of material a student is likely to encounter in our collection. Our full collection can be browsed either via the University's online library catalog or in person in the 3rd Floor stacks, around KF9219 and onward.

 Crime and Punishment in American History by Lawrence M. Friedman

Prof. Friedman is likely America's most prominent living legal historian, and while he typically focuses on broader, structural histories of the law itself or legal academia, in this instance he branched out to write about the history of criminal justice in America. The result was a truly sweeping history of crime in America, among the best ever written. The only problem is this book was published in 1993 and has not been updated, so Prof. Friedman was writing from the perspective of the major crime wave that had only just begun - then imperceptibly - to abate. Obviously a book written in the present day would end on a much different note, but Friedman's historical studies are extremely valuable.

 Law, Social Science, and the Criminal Courts by Alisa Smith

This book was among the first to apply empirical social science research as an analytical tool for understanding the reasoning behind the holdings in American criminal courts. Dr. Smith's background as a practicing attorney and a Doctor of Criminology found her particularly well-positioned to answer questions such as whether the death penalty is racially discriminatory or an effective deterrent, whether six-person and twelve-person juries differ, whether mandatory arrest policies reduce domestic violence, and so forth. The resulting book is impressive in its scope; Dr. Smith applies her research in a huge range of contexts.

 Bias in the Law edited by Joseph Avery and Joel Cooper

While this book's claim that it is the first to examine racial bias at all levels of the criminal justice system - from 911 calls to parole boards - when only published in 2020 seems bold, it appears to be accurate: the scope here is something to behold. The essays in Bias really do cover the full gamut of criminal justice, including the courtroom. Interested readers will find much to digest here, especially given the book's relatively short length.

 Substantive Criminal Law by Wayne LaFave

This multi-volume treatise is a primary contender for the most comprehensive and authoritative secondary source discussion of the Model Penal Code and its derivative statutes and cases available on the market. Prof. LaFave is likely the most highly-regarded Criminal Law scholar in America, and his treatise has been a go-to source for decades. Organized as a section-for-section analysis of the MPC, and regularly updated via pocket part. Available electronically on Westlaw.

Wharton's Criminal Law by Francis Wharton and Charles E. Torcia

 foundational type of law title is the "scholarly treatise": often starting (or rather, having started a century ago or more) as a law school textbook, the authoring professor and his or her colleagues expand the work based on new developments, cases, or areas of law that become relevant, but the entire work is still undergirded by the professor's original theories and explanations, often long after their deaths: Prof. Wharton wrote the first edition of this treatise and is long since deceased and the work is being continued by a team of new editors led by Prof. Torcia, but it still bears his name as branding of a sort, to let readers know the work's approach compared to other scholarly treatises on the subject. In any event, this title is still updated via pocket part and is available on Westlaw