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Legal Theory Bookworm

By Lawrence Solum

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Criminal Law Conversations, edited by Paul Robinson, Stephen Garvey, and Kimberly Ferzan. Here is a description:

Criminal Law Conversations provides an authoritative overview of contemporary criminal law debates in the United States. This collection of high caliber scholarly papers was assembled using an innovative and interactive method of nominations and commentary by the nation's top legal scholars. Virtually every leading scholar in the field has participated, resulting in a volume of interest to those both in and outside of the community. Criminal Law Conversations showcases the most captivating of these essays, and provides insight into the most fundamental and provocative questions of modern criminal law.

The lineup is really amazing. A sampling of the contributors includes Meir Dan-Cohen, Kyron Huigens, Samuel W. Buell, Anne M. Coughlin, Luís Duarte d?Almeida, Adil Ahmad Haque, Eric J. Miller, Malcolm Thorburn, Paul h. Robinson, Mary Sigler, Adam J. Kolber, Michael T. Cahill, Alice Ristroph, Youngjae Lee, Matthew Lister, Joseph E. Kennedy, Andrew E. Taslitz, Laura I Appleman, Christopher Slobogin, Michael Louis Corrado, Michael Marcus, Rinat Kitai-Sangero, Matt Matravers, Doron Teichman, Russell D. Covey, Alon Harel, Keith N. Hylton, Russell D. Covey, Douglas A. Berman, Jonathan S. Masur, Richard H. McAdams, Thomas J. Miles, Alon Harel, Miriam Baer, Malcolm Thorburn, Stuart P. Green, Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, Gerald Leonard, Peter Westen, Thomas Morawetz, Jeremy Horder, Bernard E. Harcourt, Michael M. O?Hear, Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alafair Burke, and Jeannie Suk?there are many more!

And from the blurbs:

?In this volume one can find both the cutting edge theoretical issues on criminal law and the thrusts and parries of the leading thinkers who have engaged those issues. Moreover, not only academics interested in criminal law but students and practitioners as well will find this to be a truly valuable resource.?

Larry Alexander, The University of Texas School of Law

 

?Criminal Law Conversations is a bravura feat of intellectual entrepreneurship by Robinson, Ferzan, and Garvey. It is a feast of interchange and provocation. Although I feel a bit sheepish about blurbing the book because I am an included author, the volume is indispensable reading for criminal law scholars.?

Stephen Morse, University of Pennsylvania Law School

 

?The criminal law allocates huge amounts of public resources with no accountability for the resulting impacts on public well-being. These conversations should be helpful to anyone interested in assessing and, perhaps addressing, this archaic dysfunction.?

Michael Marcus, Judge, Circuit Court, Multnomah County, Oregon

 

?I had the honor to follow many of these conversations as they unfolded online.  No orthodox collection of essays could have gathered such an extravagantly distinguished list of contributors, nor focused their minds so exactly on each other?s concerns, nor included such an extraordinary range of perspectives, nor maintained such uniformly high standards throughout. This is a unique product of collective enterprise, and it provides an unsurpassed guide to contemporary criminal law scholarship.?

John Gardner, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Oxford

 

?Robinson, Ferzan, and Garvey invent a brilliantly useful new format for an edited volume. They provide both a wonderful introduction to a comprehensive array of complex topics in criminal law, and also a place where the conversation between authors and commentators sharpens the cutting edge for understanding on those topics.?

Richard McAdams, The University of Chicago Law School

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 05, 2009 (boomark / email).