American Law in a Global Context : The Basics, Second Edition

American Law in Global Context provides an overview of US law, focusing on subject areas that make the American legal system distinctive. This introductory text serves as a comprehensive and accessible guide to American legal structure, history, and theory for students of law and lawyers outside the US. The authors provide in-depth analyses of well-known cases to illustrate US law theory as well as practice.

American Law in a Global Context: The Basics, now in a thoroughly revised edition, is an elegant and erudite introduction to the American legal system from a global perspective. Drawing on some comparative examples with a focus on American law, George P. Fletcher, Hoi L. Kong, and Steve Sheppard introduce underlying principles of common and civil law, constitutional, criminal, and public law, and property and procedure. The appendices include an introduction to the common law method, instruction on how to read a case, the interpretation of statutes, and an introduction to the Federal system and US courts systems. This revised edition offers a greater focus on American law itself and includes the addition of an easy-to-use Bibliography as well as a new Civil Procedure Appendix. Fletcher, Kong, and Sheppard provide a clear roadmap through essential areas of US law with in-depth analyses of well-known cases. These cases allow readers the opportunity to examine not only law as theory but as practice, while guiding them to further exploration through suggested readings. A must-own reference source for LLM students, undergraduates, and students of US law in other countries.