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Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System: An Equity Lens
Roxie Supplee; Megan Gonzalez · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
This introductory criminal justice textbook serves as a comprehensive resource for students to explore the key areas of the American criminal justice system. Students will examine the roles of the police, courts, corrections, and juvenile law. Additionally, the book introduces criminal theory, data, and legal principles. Beyond just studying these topics, students will have the opportunity to investigate potential careers and reflect on their roles and opinions within our legal system.
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Rights of the Accused
Rorie Solberg; Andrew Hoekman; Katherine McKenna; Charlotte Pietrzak · Oregon State University · 2025
This volume focuses on the constitutional doctrine and law in the areas of criminal rights. It contains excerpts of landmark cases covering the fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments, exceptions to the Warrants Rule, and investigatory methods. The excerpts include the constitutional issues in these cases that are related to rights of the accused with other questions of law and dicta omitted.
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Essential Legal Research Skills in Aotearoa New Zealand
Theresa Buller; Catherine Doughty; Melanie Lovich; Tracey Thomas · Council of Australian University Librarians · 2025
This guide to legal research and citation of New Zealand law provides direction to students undertaking legal research. It may also be useful for members of the public and self-represented litigants. It covers the core skills and knowledge for effective legal research, such as creating a search strategy, identifying where to locate legal information and legal citation using the New Zealand Law Style Guide. This text explores searching for sources of legal information including case law, legislation and commentary and explains the different approaches required to locate and cite these sources of law.
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Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System
Anne Nichol; Kendra Harding; Monica McKirdy · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
This is an introductory textbook exploring the management and treatment of people with mental disorders throughout the criminal justice system.
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Introduction to Criminology: An Equity Lens
Jessica Peterson; Taryn VanderPyl · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
Introduction to Criminology provides a foundation for understanding the origins, evolution, and current status of criminological theories. This textbook explains the field of criminology and influential theories in context, with real-life examples and activities. All content is delivered through a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each chapter includes bold-faced key terms with definitions and cross-references that link backward and forward to important concepts. Students can also engage with the content through discussion questions and supplemental resources at the end of each chapter.
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Introduction to Criminal Justice: Operations, Obstacles, and Outcomes
Indigo Koslicki · Indigo Koslicki · 2025
Introduction to Criminal Justice: Operations, Obstacles, and Outcomes is an Open Textbook that brings the foundations of the criminal justice system and current events and issues to an accessible format, where readers may interact with multimedia content in addition to traditional text.
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Introduction to Intellectual Property Law
Jason Rantanen · University of Iowa · 2023
Unlike traditionally published casebooks, which typically include short case excerpts providing key rules or doctrine, Introduction to Intellectual Property Law features one or two judicial opinions per chapter, in their entirety, along with descriptive notes to fill in the details. The resulting collection can be read on any device, free of charge. Because reading full opinions is not easy, especially at the beginning of a legal career, another important component of this casebook are sets of questions to focus on while reading the cases. Lawyers generally approach texts this way, reading with purpose rather than to glean abstract knowledge. As you read the opinions, do it with a mind toward answering the questions posed.
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Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate and the Australian Legal System
Anna Huggins; Ellen Hawkins; Steven Tudor; Nicole Rogers · La Trobe University · 2024
As the world grapples with the escalating challenges of climate change, the legal profession finds itself at a crossroads. Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate and the Australian Legal System provides an original, innovative, and accessible analysis of the impact of climate change on legal doctrines and principles. It offers an overview of cutting-edge developments and how the transition to a low-carbon society is reshaping a wide range of laws, from corporate to criminal law, and beyond. This valuable new resource supports legal professionals, law students, and legal educators to understand current legal challenges – providing the know-how to strategically navigate, and positively influence, the development of law to respond to a climate changed world. The book delivers a transformative approach to legal education: equipping law students to become climate-conscious professionals with the confidence and competency to deliver legal solutions to a diverse range of clients, and promote climate justice across diverse communities.
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Introduction to business law in Papua New Guinea
Andrew Gibson · Southern Cross University · 2024
“Introduction to Business Law in Papua New Guinea” is an introductory text designed to support students enrolled in LEGL1007 Introduction to the Business Law of Papua New Guinea at Southern Cross University. The book is structured into five parts: Part 1 provides an introduction to studying business law, including writing legal essays and problem questions; Part 2 covers negligence; Part 3 discusses contract law; Part 4 addresses consumer law; and Part 5 focuses on agency within the Papua New Guinea legal system.
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Legal Fundamentals of Healthcare Law
Tiffany Jackman · University of West Florida Pressbooks · 2024
Healthcare, a field dedicated to the well-being of individuals and communities, operates within an intricate web of legal principles. Understanding these laws is not simply a professional necessity for doctors, nurses, administrators, and researchers; it’s also an ethical imperative for anyone who interacts with the healthcare system. This book is your compass, guiding you through the labyrinth of legal fundamentals that shape the landscape of healthcare.
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Advanced Legal Research: Process and Practice
Megan Austin; Allia Service · University of Oregon Libraries · 2023
Written for students and instructors in an advanced legal research course, this book uses the steps of the legal research process to facilitate skills practice, collaboration, and reflection. It proposes a hypothetical as a basis for practicing the research process steps and encourages students and instructors to contribute other hypotheticals. The text also includes sample assignments, demonstration videos, and discussion and reflection questions, with opportunities for students and instructors to contribute additional questions. This text uses an approach that emphasizes student reflection on the development of research skills, with the benefit of repeated and consistent formative feedback.
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Trademark Law
Michael Grynberg · Michael Grynberg · 2022
Welcome to trademark law. This introductory chapter has three purposes. First, it outlines some basics of trademark law at a very high level of generality. Second, it outlines some traditional arguments for the protection of trademark rights. Finally, it introduces some issues that complicate the development and application of trademark law.
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Introduction to Criminology
Shereen Hassan; Dan Lett; Leah Ballantyne · Kwantlen Polytechnic University · 2026
Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships. Special thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for this textbook.
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Rules and Laws for Civil Actions
Stella Elias; Derek Muller; Jason Rantanen · University of Iowa · 2022
Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is an open-access resource for law students containing the U.S. Constitution, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and selected federal and state statutes. The book was created by a team of faculty members at the University of Iowa College of Law to supplement the study of Civil Procedure, Evidence, Constitutional Law, and other law school courses. In addition to containing the official text, each legal source found in Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is accompanied by an introductory section written by an Iowa Law professor explaining its significance and background.
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Criminal Procedure: Undergraduate Edition Author:
Christopher Smith; Ben Trachtenberg; Anne Alexander · Michigan State University · 2022
An open textbook for undergraduate Criminal Procedure courses that are typically required of criminal justice majors. The book uses U.S. Supreme Court opinions to illuminate the definition of rights concerning search and seizure, right to counsel, and other aspects of the criminal justice process. This open textbook seeks to make undergraduates familiar with judicial reasoning as well as the definitions of rights relevant to individuals who are drawn into contact with criminal justice officials. The chapters give significant attention to police procedures and individual rights under the Fourth Amendment related to searches, including those using warrants and the situations in which warrant searches are permissible. The book also covers rights in the context of police interrogation, including Miranda warnings and exceptions to the Miranda rule. In addition, there is coverage of the exclusionary rule, right to counsel, plea bargaining, and trial rights. It concludes with a brief examination of rights related to sentencing. This resource challenges undergraduates to understand the development and changes affecting rights as new decisions are issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Transactional Drafting: Introduction to Contract Drafting and Transactional Practice
Ben Fernandez · Ben Fernandez · 2021
Transactional Drafting: Introduction to Contract Drafting and Transactional Practice contains a condensed presentation of all of the topics typically covered in an upper-level law school class on contract drafting. The book covers drafting from scratch including writing in plain English (not using legalese), avoiding ambiguity, and drafting covenants, rights and prohibitions consistently (using "will" or "shall" for covenants, "may" for rights, and "will not" or "shall not" for prohibitions). And it covers contract organization, from the title and the exordium to the core covenant, deal provisions and "boilerplate," to the testimonium and the signature blocks. The book also includes material on getting up to speed before you start drafting and brainstorming for contingencies after you have finished. In addition to drafting from scratch the book introduces students to the wide range of skills involved in transactional practice. There are chapters on revising form documents, both when you are the original drafter and when you represent the other side. Also, the book includes chapters on negotiating contract language, handling a closing (i.e., verifying authority and getting the documents signed), dealing with ethical issues that arise in contract drafting and execution, drafting a contract amendment, and using computers to draft contracts. Transactional Drafting includes everything students need to know to “hit the ground running” as a transactional attorney.
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Legal Writing I & II: Legal Research and Writing & Introduction to Litigation Practice
Ben Fernandez · Ben Fernandez · 2020
Legal Writing I & II; Legal Research and Writing & Introduction to Litigation Practice contains a brief discussion of all of the topics covered in a law school courses on legal writing, including a typical first semester course on legal research, analysis and writing an objective memorandum, as well as a second semester course on persuasion and writing an appellate brief, motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment. The discussion focuses on the basics of analogical reasoning and persuasion and leaves out the minutiae. Each topic is taken one step at a time, with each step building on the step before it. The sources of law are presented first, then legal research, and reading and analyzing cases and statutes. The book covers analogizing a case to a fact pattern and marshaling the relevant facts to the elements of a statutory rule next. And then first section of the book concludes with legal citation, CRAC and CREAC, and writing a legal research memorandum. The text also includes a lot of samples and examples of how the author would write a case brief, a legal memoranda and an appellate brief, as well as an appendix with charts, outlines and exercises students can use to practice these skills. Legal Writing I & II; Legal Research and Writing & Introduction to Litigation Practice covers all the skills students need to know to work at a law firm, and everything students have to learn to begin practicing in litigation department of a firm.
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Civil Rights and Liberties
Rorie Solberg; Kimberly Clairmont; Petar Jeknic; Sarah Mason · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2023
This volume focuses on the constitutional doctrine and law in the areas of civil rights and liberties. It contains excerpts of landmark cases covering the first amendment, second amendment, fourteenth amendment and the right to privacy. The excerpts include the constitutional issues in these cases that are related to civil rights and liberties with other questions of law and dicta omitted.
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Religion in the Law: An Open Access Casebook
Joe Dunman · L. Joe Dunman · 2026
This casebook features over 70 cases from American courts that involve, in some important way, religious belief and action. The book is divided into sections: First Principles, Establishment, Free Exercise, and Special Problems. Each section includes landmark or otherwise influential cases that have influenced American law and religious practice. Most cases come from the U.S. Supreme Court but the lower federal and state courts are also represented.In the contextual introductions to each section and subpart, I have tried to give the reader a basis for understanding how the cases came about and why I chose them for this book. I have tried to minimize editorial comment. I have cited some scholarship where I think it would be helpful, but please do not mistake this as an attempt to produce a comprehensive treatise on the subject of religion in the law. It is a casebook, and a short one, all things considered. At the end of each introductory part is a short “further reading” list. I chose those articles because I found each of them interesting and useful to understanding the topics that precede them. Their selection is not necessarily an endorsement of each author’s arguments, though I do agree with some of them.I designed this casebook specifically for my own use upper level law school seminar called Law & Religion. Class sessions using this book are intended to be student-led, round table talks with the professor acting as discussion prompter and neutral mediator. Generally, 2-5 cases are assigned for each class session. I selected, edited, and arranged the cases to complement each other thematically and chronologically to the best of my ability. Many of the cases include overlapping topics and could fit into multiple categories, so I took some liberties in their arrangement. Your mileage may vary.
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Open Judicial Politics
Rorie Solberg; Jennifer Diascro; Eric Waltenburg · Oregon State University · 2020
The impetus for this volume was a multitude of conversations regarding pedagogy and teaching related to our judicial process courses. Based on these conversations, we identified four main threads or needs of our colleagues: First, many of us bring or want to bring more “political science” into our classes, though we also want to avoid the high costs of reinventing successful existing courses to do so. Second, our programs all require a political methodology course, and we want to reinforce those lessons in our substantive courses. We want to encourage our students’ understanding of how to read and understand research studies as well as how to craft their own research questions. Third, we want to keep our courses as current as possible. And fourth, we wanted to find a way to bring the cost of our courses down, as we see so many students struggle with the high costs of a college degree. This volume (as well as any future editions) addresses each of these concerns. Open Judicial Politics is a compilation of new and original research in judicial politics written specifically for the undergraduate audience, thus providing accessible examples of political science research that also address some of the more current concerns and controversies in our field. Additionally, every article is accompanied by some type of classroom activity—from basic discussion questions to full-blown simulations—that makes it easier for instructors to adapt the material to their courses and enhance classes with interactives. The chapters of the volume generally follow the well-worn path of most textbooks of judicial politics, making the volume an easy companion for adoption, and the material should fit seamlessly into the preestablished structures of most courses. Finally, the volume is an open-source resource, and adoption of the text adds no cost for our students. Whether one uses one or ten articles, the cost remains nil. This volume includes twenty-two original contributions that we have grou