Legal Studies

After years of teaching law courses to undergraduate, graduate, and law students, Michael Evan Gold has come to believe that the traditional way of teaching - analysis, explanation, and example - is superior to the Socratic Method for students at the outset of their studies. In courses taught Socratically, even the most gifted students can struggle, and many others are lost in a fog for months. Gold offers a meta approach to teaching legal reasoning, bringing the process of argumentation to the fore. Using examples both from the law and from daily life, Gold's book will help undergraduates and first-year law students to understand legal discourse. The book analyzes and illustrates the principles of legal reasoning, such as logical deduction, analogies and distinctions, and application of law to fact, and even solves the mystery of how to spot an issue. In Gold's experience, students who understand the principles of analytical thinking are able to understand arguments, to evaluate and reply to them, and ultimately to construct sound arguments of their own.

As policing has recently become a major topic of public debate, it was also a growing area of ethnographic research. Writing the World of Policing brings together an international roster of scholars who have conducted fieldwork studies of law enforcement in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods on five continents. How, they ask, can ethnography illuminate the role of the police in society? Are there important aspects of policing that are not captured through interviews and statistics? And how can the study of law enforcement shed light on the practice of ethnography? What might studying policing teach us about the epistemological and ethical challenges of participant observation? Beyond these questions of crucial interest for criminology and, more generally, the social sciences, Writing the World of Policing provides a timely discussion of one of the most problematic institutions in contemporary society.

The SAGE Guide to Writing in Criminal Justice equips you with transferable writing skills that can be applied across the field of criminal justice--both academically and professionally. Authors Steven Hougland and Jennifer M. Allen interweave professional and applied writing, academic writing, and information literacy, with the result being a stronger, more confident report writer and student in criminal justice. You are also exposed to a number of best practices for academic and professional writing, such as research papers, resumes and cover letters, and report writing. The perfect companion for any introductory criminal justice course, this brief text focuses on key topics that will benefit you in your classes and in the field. 

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the authors for their excellent effort in providing what will surely become essential reading  material for forensic psychology courses throughout Australia." Professor James Ogloff, Monash University The credibility of a psychologist called upon to prepare a report for court as an expert witness will be questioned if the document presented is viewed as poor. The court will place little weight on the report and the psychologist's professional reputation will be placed at risk. Complaints against psychologists to registration boards, ethics committees and litigation proceedings are frequently the consequence of poor psychological reports. it is vital therefore that psychologists receive guidelines to assist with the preparation of these reports to the same degree of precision they receive for the writing of the ubiquitous American Psychological Association (APA) formatted research report.