Reviews for Guide to Criminal Law for California

The average rating for Guide to Criminal Law for California based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-21 00:00:00 Zorick Johnson Fun, quick read for those interested in the history of the common law. The book is essentially four lectures Prof. Van Caenegem gave as a visiting scholar at Cambridge. He’s Belgian, and more or less gently pokes fun at the Pollack and Maitland thesis that English law is essentially English. He thinks it’s essentially Norman, very much the product of William the Conqueror and Henry II’s personal geniuses, and very much the product of centralization. At times I was tempted to dismiss him as a Burkean conservative with his glorification of anointed monarchs, viz: “When William the Bastard was preparing his campaign, there were in Europe two kinds of rulers. On the one hand were the anointed monarchs, national kings, revered and distant figures like King Edgar, ‘father of the monks,’ and the saintly King Edward the Confessor in England or Saint Henry II in Germany, quasi-episcopal ‘rois thaumaturges’, surrounded by a religious halo, who tended to be venerated rather than obeyed, respected rather than feared, distant father-figures closer to God than to the people, guarantors of justice and keepers of the immutable good old laws, secure in their hereditary dignity and the knowledge that royal blood flowed in their veins. On the other hand, particularly in anarchic France, were the territorial princes whose power was ultimately based on usurpation, violence, and success in war and who ruled over small countries. They were tyrannical upstarts who made up through incessant and brutal personal intervention for their weak legitimacy and dealt in a high-handed way with people and situations which the law courts could not, or were not supposed, to face. They were feudal gang-leaders, not crowned heads, and such order as there was in their duchies and countries depended on their personal and iron-fisted intervention.” (8) Seeming to forget that the divinely appointed tended to be the grandsons of the gang-leaders. But then he’d undercut it with something like: “William of Normandy belonged very much to the latter type. . . . This man, who felt that the death penalty was too lenient and ordered blinding and emasculation instead, conquered England through victory on the battlefield, as was his habit, and was crowned king. . . This violent ruler of a turbulent minor principality became the anointed of the Lord, the wealthy ruler of the best organized monarchy in all Europe.” (8-9). Heh heh. That cutting and undercutting pleased me because it reminded me of Whedon. He’s clearly aware of it too, viz: “Let us start this chapter with a paradox in spite of the fact that ‘relish for paradox has no place in sober history.’ It is that English and continental law irrevocably took their different courses in the very century, the twelfth, when English civilization was closer to the Continent, and less insular than at any other time . . . To lawyers outside Anglo-Saxon lands the traditional Common Law is well nigh incomprehensible . . . because there are no codes that encompass it, a circumstance that turned away the Japanese under the great modernizer Meiji, in favour of the continental codes. But Englishmen fully share this incomprehension mixed with aversion, s far as ‘the alien jungle of the Code Civil’ is concerned – I quote the phrased used by a B.B.C. correspondent, in a programme on the legal consequences of Britain joining the European Common Market.” (85) Which made me laugh out loud. I’ve talked to some German and Japanese lawyers over the years who have come over to get a second law decree who have commented about how weird our common law tradition is to them. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of whether or not England was going to adopt the Euro. I’m not sure I buy the idea that the English common law tradition isn’t English. England has always been a crossroads. I don’t see how something is less a part of the Anglo-American heritage because we borrowed it from someone. But it’s a short book, and it taught me that the show cause hearing was pretty much established by 1112. (52). We should have a party and celebrate! Or something.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-20 00:00:00 Benedict Lore Albeit a relatively short book -- how could we expect the birth of the common law to fit in only 110 pages -- converted from lectures given by Mr. van Caenegem, it is packed with information and insight into the birth and origins of the common law system in England. There seems to be, to me at least, some general idea that the civil law tradition is centralized law, law high on rationalism, promulgated by a legislature, written in statute. And civil-law judges act more like administrative overseers and bureaucrats, unbound by precedent (if the last decision was bad, why follow it). The Common law alternatively, is more decentralized, law higher in empiricism, handed down by courts, written in judgments. Common law judges find the law, not make the law, more than any bureaucrat would. Unfortunately, this contrasting image of the common law is only partially correct, maybe even mistaken, especially for its radical roots. Caenegem shows how what we today call the common law came from the legal reform of English kings, Henry II especially and in particular. Henry tinkered with so much and under his rule centralization (moving jurisdiction from disparate local courts to central royal courts) and specialization (chancery etc) took hold over English law. Henry was part of the lineage of the Norman conquerors after William in 1066. With them the Normans brought French feudal law, something that England technically did not have up to that point. I'm sure there were similarities, but the rules of feudalism as we know it were a Norman import. Feudal law then became an important root for common law, in a addition to the "advanced" tools of administration of the Norman state. This Norman talent for administration helped them create the procedures that became the common law, the royal writs for example. It is interesting to see how the new English royal elite and aristocracy were in fact French (Norman French). There appeared to be a split in language, culture, and temperament between the people, who remained English with their English customs and English institutions, and the leaders, who remained French with their French language, customs, and laws. The royal law and royal writs had French as its language. Local courts no doubt kept their old English. But while the perfect image of the common law as pure bottom-up judge-found law, with the judge probing to discover the norms and customs of the community in the dispute before him, may be flawed, there may be a way to still find truth in it. Caenegem indicates that's there was still some diffusion of judicial power, though this point was not his emphasis. It appears that the royal courts after receiving a writ would send cases (back) to the local courts to "do the king's justice." Even the judges in eyre went into the local communities to settle disputes, though the record indicates that there were starts and stops to their activity. So perhaps instead of a centralization of the the law, we can describe it more as making the law uniform, a systemization or regulation (making regular). There was a dynamic back and forth of cases and orders between local courts, the eyre, and royal courts; that through the dynamic exchange the law evolved. Given the logistical constraints of states at the time, the necessity of using local courts by the king to effectuate "the king's justice" kept door open for influence by local law and custom in the particular cases. This was not Caenegem's point, just an observation of mine. This book is not an easy read. The author frequently used Latin terms and phrases without and speaks/writes in tough prose. But if you get through it all, you willed be rewarded.