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So tell me about criminal law where the casebook used is Dressler's. Should I expect rules, elements etc. or should I expect principals and general wishy-washy-ness?

Edit: I ask because I want to know what I should be paying attention to when doing readings etc. Naturally this will be somewhat professor dependent but just wanted to see if the casebook was a particular indicator at all. FWIW, we weren't assigned any other materials, just this casebook.

dont buy the casebook just buy and read his supplement from the Lexis Understanding series. or listen to his tapes -- he does a CD set where he basically goes through everything you need to know. You can listen to it on your way to class.

the casebook is full of cases that would 'excite' a law professor but are pretty useless when you are trying to understand the blackletter law. it would be ok if he had at least one case that was like the 'standard' basic run of the mill case and then gave u harder cases as things to think about, but the only exemplars for stuff are from these cases with crazy facts that obfuscate everything.

jkech wrote:dont buy the casebook just buy and read his supplement from the Lexis Understanding series. or listen to his tapes -- he does a CD set where he basically goes through everything you need to know. You can listen to it on your way to class.

the casebook is full of cases that would 'excite' a law professor but are pretty useless when you are trying to understand the blackletter law. it would be ok if he had at least one case that was like the 'standard' basic run of the mill case and then gave u harder cases as things to think about, but the only exemplars for stuff are from these cases with crazy facts that obfuscate everything.

+1. The casebook was almost worthless to me. Understanding Crim is clutch. I also really enjoyed the sum and substance lectures because they sort of broke everything down to their bare elements. My real learning came from practice tests+really good outline with every rule broken down into its little pieces. That's just me though.

I'm told the prof. is very model penal code heavy, does this change the recommendations at all?

The MPC is the only thing you'll really need from the casebook. There are maybe one or two cases that you'll likely cite on your exam (Pinkerton, etc), but you can get the gist of those from Understanding or class notes.

To recap: buy Understanding Crim if you haven't already. That's a must. I also used Dressler's Black Letter Outline book pretty heavily, having that as a skeleton of my outline and then using Understanding/class notes to fill in the details.