In the beginning was the framework of our country, The Constitution of the United States of America. It was considered to be pretty good, balancing the needs of the nascent people. However, since it was a framework, a lot of time had to be devoted to filling in that frame. This was mainly done in practice, through the efforts of our legal system.

This book, The Greatest Criminal Cases by J. Michael Martinez, does an outstanding job of showing the human side of the law. As the author mentions in the book, he had been teaching a class on legal proceedings and a number of students had terrible things to say about the class. This disappointed the author since he felt it was interesting to find out the stories behind the laws and not just Ancient Latin Phrases and other boring things.

The book doesn’t exactly begin at the beginning, so to speak, but rather in 1884, when a gentleman killed a man that had been sleeping with his wife. It deals with 19th Century Criminal procedure, in that the Supreme Court ruled that if you have a criminal offense, it is not necessary for a trial by a Grand jury. The case, Hurtado versus California, is the first one in the book, and one of many that I had never heard of. In fact, I think I had only heard of one case in this book, and that is because the result of that case leaks into popular culture. For instance, if you are a fan of CSI or Law & Order or any other television law drama, they probably read a person that they handcuff their ‘Miranda Rights.’ This is from a case that occurred in 1966, Miranda versus Arizona.

Beyond that one, the only other one I have heard of is Terry versus Ohio, and even then I didn’t know the particulars. So in a sense, all of the cases establish a precedent by which subsequent cases are to follow. The human element of the stories makes it more interesting than just some textbook on Law. Thus, I liked this book quite a bit. ( )