Review Essay: Casebooks, Social Context, and Criminal Procedure for Law Enforcement

DOI10.1177/0734016807310671
Date01 December 2007
Published date01 December 2007
AuthorJoseph De Angelis
Subject MatterArticles
CJR310671.qxd Review Essay
Criminal Justice Review
Volume 32 Number 4
December 2007 423-430
© 2007 Georgia State University
Research Foundation, Inc.
Casebooks, Social Context,
10.1177/0734016807310671
http://cjr.sagepub.com
and Criminal Procedure
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
for Law Enforcement
Joseph De Angelis
Ohio University, Athens
del Carmen, R., & Walker, J. T. (2006). Briefs of Leading Cases in Law
Enforcement
(6th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, pp. 306
Holtz, L. E. (2004). Contemporary Criminal Procedure: Court Decisions
for Law Enforcement
(8th ed.). Longwood, FL: Gould, pp. 946
In this essay the author reviews a couple of the most prominent criminal procedure casebooks
for criminal justice students. In particular, the author focuses on the question of how well these
texts function as training tools for nonlawyers who require a working understanding of criminal
procedure for law enforcement. After providing a general review of these titles, the author
situates the strengths and weaknesses of these texts within a growing debate over the best
approaches to teaching criminal procedure to undergraduate criminal justice students.
Keywords:
casebooks; criminal procedure; law; social context; undergraduate students
Within the area of law and society, much has been made of the distance between law in
the books versus law in action (Llewellyn, 1930a, 1930b). Accordingly, a great deal of
social scientific and legal scholarship has been devoted to understanding why the actions
of police officers and other criminal justice actors may diverge from the requirements
imposed by statutes and constitutional case law (Barker & Carter, 1996; Chevigny, 1969;
Cohen & Feldberg, 1991; Geller & Toch, 1995; Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert, 1998; Skolnick,
1966; Skolnick & Fyfe, 1993; Stoddard, 1968; Westley, 1970). Although social scientists
have focused on a broad array of possible causes for police misconduct, arguably one
important obstacle that officers face when it comes to following the law relates to the inherent
difficulty of learning and remaining up-to-date with criminal procedure case law (Heffernan
& Lovely, 1991; Hirokawa, 2000; Milner, 1971; Perrin, Caldwell, Chase, & Fagan, 1998;
Wasby, 1976). Developing a competent, working understanding of criminal procedure is
not an easy task, and the constitutional issues that officers routinely face are some of the
most difficult and rapidly evolving areas of law. And unlike lawyers, who receive 3 years of
formal legal training and are required to pass a rigorous certification exam, criminal justice
students and police recruits typically receive only rudimentary training in criminal procedure
and must fill in the gaps through on-the-job training. Unfortunately, very little has been
written about the best pedagogical approaches to preparing criminal justice students for
operating in complex legal environments such as law enforcement. That is not to say, how-
ever, that this area has been entirely ignored. Rather, a relatively robust publishing industry
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Criminal Justice Review
has developed in the past 20 years around the goal making of criminal procedure pedagogy
to nonlawyers. In this essay, I take up the issue of criminal procedure pedagogy and review
several examples of the most prominent works within this literature. In particular, I focus
on the question of how well these texts function as training tools for nonlawyers who
require a practical, working understanding of criminal procedure for law enforcement. In
the second half of this essay, I try to place these texts within a growing debate over the best
approaches to teaching criminal procedure to criminal justice students.
Introducing Criminal Justice Students to Criminal Procedure
What is the best way to prepare undergraduate criminal justice students for operating in
the complex legal environment of law enforcement? Although very little has been written
about teaching criminal justice students criminal procedure, it is clear that the reigning
method is largely derived from the traditional pedagogical approach developed in American
law schools. Under this approach, courses are typically organized around the reading of a
large casebook filled with Supreme Court and appellate decisions, where students are asked
to distill the reigning constitutional principles underlying modern U.S. criminal procedure
(Smith, 1996). There is no doubt that this approach has a number of benefits for students.
For example, it forces students to become familiar with difficult and specialized language
of Supreme Court jurisprudence, and students have the chance to see legal reasoning in
action. This approach is also great training for undergraduate students who may be thinking
about attending law school. It is clear, however, that there are drawbacks to this approach
when it is applied to undergraduate criminal justice students. For example, undergraduate
criminal justice students have far less preparation, skill, aptitude, and experience than law
students when it comes to absorbing a great deal of material on criminal procedure case
law. The casebooks that are suitable for law students are often too lengthy and pitched at too
high of a level for many criminal justice students. And, at least in my experience, many under-
graduate students are intimidated by the legal language found in appellate court decisions
and often spend a disproportionate amount of time simply trying to understand the language,
rather than trying to understand the legal ideas and principles that underlie the decisions.
As a result of these different abilities and needs, a specialized set of criminal procedure
texts have emerged that are designed specifically for audiences other than law students.
These texts, which are...

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