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My crim law class is taught in a bit of an nontraditional way. Instead of learning the various rules for murder, robbery, etc, the class focuses on how to read a statute. A majority of the class is spent on learning how to apply mens rea to the various elements in a statute. In the exam, the professor provides us with a list of criminal statutes that he made up. We must then apply these to a fact pattern.

I'm wondering if anyone else has taken a crim class that has been taught in this way and if their are any tips to doing well. The traditional supplements such as Dressler won't work for me because I do not need to focus on learning any actual black letter law. Are there any supplements that provide questions in which you must apply an original statute to a set of facts?

generaltoast wrote:My crim law class is taught in a bit of an nontraditional way. Instead of learning the various rules for murder, robbery, etc, the class focuses on how to read a statute. A majority of the class is spent on learning how to apply mens rea to the various elements in a statute. In the exam, the professor provides us with a list of criminal statutes that he made up. We must then apply these to a fact pattern.

I'm wondering if anyone else has taken a crim class that has been taught in this way and if their are any tips to doing well. The traditional supplements such as Dressler won't work for me because I do not need to focus on learning any actual black letter law. Are there any supplements that provide questions in which you must apply an original statute to a set of facts?

thats not too uncommon. my test had a MC that treated crimes we actually went thru and other general principles of criminal law but our essay section involved statues for crimes we had never studied and we had to interpret those statues and apply them to the fact pattern.

Gotcha. Its just a bit concerning to me because I am spending so much time on my other classes and almost no time on Crim because I feel I have nothing to really study.