I spent the last three months revising the 4th Amendment materials of the Kamisar LaFave & Israel Criminal Procedure casebook for the 16th edition of the book, which will be available for the Fall 2023 semester. I thought I might say something about the experience, as I think it raises interesting questions about generational change in law school courses and materials — and perhaps about the state of the criminal procedure field today.
First, some context. The Kamisar LaFave & Israel casebook basically invented the field of constitutional criminal procedure as a subject, starting with its first edition in 1965. I've been on the casebook for well over a decade, but until now I had responsibilities for only a small part. This time around, I am taking over most of the 4th Amendment materials as part of a broader generational shift in the book. This is a little bit oversimplified, but the basic idea of that generational shift is that Eve Brensike Primus has taken over the interrogation law and right to counsel materials from Yale Kamisar, who passed away earlier this year; I have taken over the Fourth Amendment materials from Wayne LaFave, who has retired; and Nancy King has taken over the adjudicatory criminal procedure materials from Jerry Israel, who has also retired.
Revising a classic casebook is a daunting prospect. Each of us "second generation" authors is well aware we are following the footsteps of true giants in the Criminal Procedure field. But it also seems to me the nature of things that, as one generation of editors moves on to the next, each new generation will recast the materials to fit the new set of authors — and a new generation of readers. Along those lines, I ended up quite considerably rewriting the Fourth Amendment materials of the book. Much of the basic structure is similar, and many of the main cases are the same (albeit re-edited). And while some of the changes are author preferences — do you spend a lot of time on the facts of cases? How long do you spend on dissents? etc. — some of them strike me as more generational shifts in how to think of law school casebooks, and the field of criminal procedure, more broadly, that might be of interest to a broader readership.
