America's Courts and the Criminal Justice System

This best-selling text on criminal courts features a unique emphasis on courthouse dynamics, which gives students a true sense of being in the courthouse.

The book's unique themes -- the law on the books, the law in action, and the law in controversy -- provide students with a means of focusing on important issues and how to think critically about them.

"Case Close-Up" boxes in each chapter present important court decisions that have affected our nation's criminal justice system. These boxes also highlight the dynamic nature of courts in the United States.

"Courts and Controversy" boxes deal with contentious issues in the criminal courts system and how these issues are resolved.

The thirteenth edition features three appendices: the U.S. Constitution; an overview of the United States Constitution, focusing on parts of the Constitution that describe the judicial system; and legal reasoning, an explanation of adjudication as the formal process by which legal disputes are judicially resolved in courts of law.

Streamlined coverage in 15 chapters (compared to 17 in previous edition) makes this market-leading text easier than ever to use in a traditional semester. The first chapter now provides an overview of both courts and law in the United States, and the two sentencing chapters have been combined into one.

Updated statistics illuminate all aspects of the criminal justice judicial process, including current information on federal and state courts and their caseloads, juvenile crime, case attrition, and sentencing.

Students gain insight into the latest U.S. Supreme Court cases, such as Foster v. Chatman (2016), Birchfield v. North Dakota (2016), and Glossip v. Gross (2016), as well as changes to the Court, such as the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch.

Current, new examples illustrate principles throughout the book. For example, Chapter 1 uses the case of Dylann Roof to illustrate key points of the study of courts throughout the chapter, while Chapter 9 employs the case of Brock Turner to study defendants, victims, and witnesses.