Georgetown "Criminal Justice" Question

[njlaw]

Why doesn't Georgetown Law teach Criminal Law to 1L's like normal law schools? Why do they have this ridiculous class called "Criminal Justice" where you spend the entire semester studying the Fourth Amendment, and it ends up being like another Con. Law. class?

You don't learn any model penal code stuff, anything about statutory/substantive criminal law. You instead spend the entire semester dissecting jurisprudence on whether opening the trunk of a car is a search? WHY? What's wrong with this school?

[kalvano]

Because the Fourth Amendment is one of the top-3 most important things you need to know in criminal work. It takes 2.7834 seconds to find the elements of homicide, it takes a lot longer to see if the evidence that led to the defendant being charges with homicide was legally obtained.

Crim Pro is easily one of the 3 or 4 most useful classes in lawl skool if you're at all interested in doing criminal work.

[nealric]

GULC grad here:

"Criminal Justice" = Criminal Procedure

GULC substitutes it because it's far more useful for the average lawyer than criminal law. Criminal law mostly involves pontificating on the mens rea and distinguishing things like "theft" from "robbery". If you were actually representing a client accused of a crime, you would be far more likely to need to know whether your client was subject to an unlawful search and seizure than whether your client had the necessary mens rea.