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Rating: Summary: A very good casebook for a very difficult subject Review: Profs Gunther and Sullivan's casebook is an excellent casebook for Constitutional Law which is a difficult area of law professors to teach and for law students to understand. Pros: Good case edits; excellent, almost flawless treatment of materials up until the First Amendment materials; instructive, informative, and, at times, prophetic notes to the cases. Cons: The First Amendment Section of the book (roughly the last 500 pages) suffers at times from a thematic layout that sometimes confuses the chronological timeframes; because of the formatting of the text, the notes that follow the case are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the cases themselves and/or note cases.
Rating: Summary: Excellent book! Review: This is a classic Law school Constitutional Law case book. It's very complete, with A LOT of cases, but some useful explanations and the latest development in constitutional history.
Rating: Summary: Tough Topic, Great Casebook Review: This is as good a constitutional law casebook as it gets. Nobody ever said that this area of the law is even remotely clear and easily accessible. Gunther and Sullivan have managed to put together a comprehensive list of cases that does justice to the, sometimes, mind - boggling complexity of the law. Those that just want to get through law school will be satisfied reading Emanuels; those that are scholars of the law will enjoy the challenge of this casebook.
Rating: Summary: Disaster. Review: This is one of the worst law books I have ever read. It was assigned for an upper-level constitutional class. Trying to decipher what the authors are attempting to impart through the near total use of squibs as opposed to full opinions, and their own cryptic notes interspersed among snipets of the cases, is next to impossible to accomplish. In addition, their particular method of editing is intrusive and annoying. Some of the brightest minds in the country have written classic opinions on the very important subjects in this book. Why in the world Sullivan and Gunther think they can do better is beyond me given their result. Avoid this book like the plaque if at all possible.
Rating: Summary: Disaster. Review: This is one of the worst law books I have ever read. It was assigned for an upper-level constitutional class. Trying to decipher what the authors are attempting to impart through the near total use of squibs as opposed to full opinions, and their own cryptic notes interspersed among snipets of the cases, is next to impossible to accomplish. In addition, their particular method of editing is intrusive and annoying. Some of the brightest minds in the country have written classic opinions on the very important subjects in this book. Why in the world Sullivan and Gunther think they can do better is beyond me given their result. Avoid this book like the plaque if at all possible.
Rating: Summary: An excellent casebook on Constitutional Law Review: Unfortunately, law school is not for everyone (see the reviews below). However, I would not lay the blame at the feet of what is an excellent casebook. If one is looking for a quick and shallow statement of the blackletter law then I recommend reading Emmanuel's (full disclosure: I was a paid reviewer for Emmanuel's). If you want to understand Constitutional Law without having to read the cases, then I highly recommend American Constitutional Law by Laurence Tribe, which is an excellent book in its own right, and I would strongly recommend it in addition to the Gunther and Sullivan casebook. However, it is necessary in order to gain a full understanding of the law to go through the process of case analysis. This is especially true in the field of Constitutional Law. While it is perhaps possible for one to become an expert on the topic of Criminal Law or Torts on Emmanuel's alone, it is necessary to read the cases to fully understand Constitutional Law. This is because Constitutional law is composed of primarily three things: first, the text of the Constitution itself; second, historical documentation such as the Federalist Papers (I strongly recommend the Mentor edition); and third, the cases themselves, precedent. This is the stuff that con law is made of, Justice Brennan and the "spirit" of the Constitution notwithstanding. If you have the capacity and the desire to learn constitutional law, I would strongly recommend purchasing this casebook. Gunther and Sullivan do an excellent job of structuring the cases, and the notes will probe and challenge your understanding of the material, and even provide a synopsis of the "law" in case you failed to read the case as thoroughly as perhaps you should have.
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