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 14th edition features three appendices: The U.S. Constitution, an overview of the United States Constitution that focuses on parts of the Constitution that describe the judicial system and legal reasoning that explains adjudication as the formal process by which legal disputes are judicially resolved in courts of law.

This market-leading text is ideal to use in a traditional semester. Updated statistics illuminate all aspects of the criminal judicial process, including current information on federal and state courts and their caseloads, juvenile crime, case attrition, bail, sentencing and wrongful convictions. Issues of structural inequality have been thoroughly infused throughout the book.

Students gain insight into the latest U.S. Supreme Court cases. Students also learn about changes to the Court, including the controversies surrounding Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the increased use of the Court’s “shadow docket,” the ethical concerns about the behavior of several Justices and the growing politicization of the Court and its corresponding effect on public perception of the Court’s legitimacy.

New contemporary examples illustrate principles throughout the book.