The lecture is value packed, a terrific course overview. Methodical and thoughtfully designed. It was a great supplement to my studies. Interestingly, the author, wrote the textbook assigned to my class. I also would highly recommend Dressler's "Casenote" Criminal law outline as source for tons of practical hypo's.

Prof. Dressler has put together an extraordinarily useful and readable guide to the labyrinth that is U.S. criminal procedure. In fact, the book helped this otherwise mediocre law student get an "A" in the course at University of Chicago. I must dispute his statement that the book is only for law students, however. I referred to it again and again as a refresher in the fundamentals when I was a fledgling prosecuter. In fact, I just gave a copy to a friend of mine who is a new Assistant U.S. Attorney

I completely agree with the reviews below: this is a thorough and infintely readable supplement for any student of criminal law OR for the interested layperson. It was especially useful for my studies because I had the pleasure of being assigned Prof. Dressler's casebook as well, which I regard as the best (among many) of my first year casebooks. This is a clearly written and thoughtfully designed book covering all the basic concepts of modern criminal law in the U.S. I highly recommend it.

As a first year law student, I found this book to be a valuable companion to class lectures and other homework assignments, providing clarification, elaboration and insight into this complex and rich subject. If you have not yet had the privilege of adding this to your library, I especially recommend it at this critical period for many -- a few weeks before final examinations!

This book does an excellent job of going through the rationales, policies, and histories of the different aspects of criminal law. It includes summeries of the Model Penal Code view on all topics and compares this with the common law and majority rules of law. Overall it is an excellent supplement to any casebook.

This is a terrible book, but unfortunately you probably won't have much choice in whether or not to use it if it is required for your course. I agree with the other reviewer that the companion softbound supplement is far more useful in understanding the concepts presented. If you can find that or the Bar review multistate materials, you'll learn far more of the structure of criminal law than you will from this book. This is a philosophy text.

If Dressler spent half as much time explaining topics as he does making snide political comments, this book would be far superior.

Luckily, Criminal Law is just one semester and the Bar review materials generally make up for the many shortcomings of this ridiculous text.

Of all the case books that I have used thus far in my law school career, this book by far is the worst. While some of the cases are interesting, Dressler fails many times to give adequate explantions of many of the topics covered. Dressler does a much more impressive job of conveying the topic in his book "Understanding Criminal Law".

This book was required for my criminal law class (as it is for many law students) and I must admit that the cases were generally very interesting to read. Now having said that, the book has some faults. The huge sections devoted to opinions of various academics (for example those who are for and against the death penalty) seemed a bit out of place and should have been shorter (and probably presented in another class dealing with more philosophical issues) so that more could have been presented to clarify legal concepts. Some sections such as Inchoate Crimes could use more explanation and I thought it didn't make sense to separate the Actus Reus and Mens Rea sections simply because they are interconnected concepts. It felt as if we were jumping around from one subject to another rather than proceeding in a more deliberate and logical manner. I'm not alone in my criticism of this book as many of my classmates voiced similar concerns, but our professor was an excellent teacher and with her help I was able to better understand some of the concepts while I used the book as more of a compass rather than a guide.

In general, anything I've learned about the law, I've learned through sum & substance tapes. I find them highly useful. However, I am disappointed here. Unlike the tapes for criminal procedure, the tapes for criminal law would not help a law student or bar applicant adequately. Here, Dressler focuses too heavily on theories of law rather than the items that would really be tested on an exam. For instance, he spent much time on legal impossibility but little time on the various categories of murder. I would try to find other audio choices for criminal law if I could turn back time.