Anyway, I checked this book out at the library about a year ago. I chose it because (a) as a libertarian, I am interested in the legal right to self-defense, and (b) I was, and still am, planning to go to law school. What struck me is that the book is far more than just an account of the Goetz trial. Fletcher uses the issues raised by the trial as a springboard for exploring deeper issues. For example, are there limits to the scope of preventive, or "prophylactic," laws? (Anti-gun laws are preventive laws.) Here is Fletcher describing the rationale for so-called prophylactic laws:
"Possession offences do not prohibit wrongful deeds. Rather they regulate behavior so that people never reach the stage of using the prohibited article in a harmful or wrongful way. There is nothing per se immoral orwicked about a single instance of possessing narcotics, guns, or counterfeit plates. But it might be better for society as a whole to eliminate these articles from circulation. Possession offenses are addressed not to the single incident, but to the entire class of problematic events....Lawyers express regulatory purpose of possession offenses by referring to them as 'prophylactic offenses.'"
While writing an essay on child pornography laws about a month after reading Fletcher's book, I found myself thinking back to the above passage. I realized that laws prohibiting the possession of child pornography are prophylactic. I ended up using the excerpt in my essay.
Fletcher also introduces the reader to the Model Penal Code. Written in 1962 by lawyers and legal scholars, this project was an attempt to codify the criminal codes of all 50 states, along with the U.S. criminal code and that of Washington D.C., into one code. Yet with the competing influence of statutes, common law tradition, ever-changing case law, today's criminal law is anything but simple. Fletcher explains how the legal issues got so complex that, on at least two occasions, both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer got confused about their own strategies.
To sum up, Fletcher's book is, as the cover blurb claims, like an "education in criminal law and virtually a law school education in itself." In fact, the whole reason I looked up the book on Amazon.com is that I plan to buy it so that I have my own copy. Several times, while thinking about some moral or legal issue, I've thought, "Didn't that book about Bernhard Goetz have something to say about this concept?"
In contrast to the empty criticisms of the other two reviewers -- notice that their reviews give no examples, are too brief, and have an ad hominem flavor -- this book won the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association and received critical acclaim. It deserved all the praise it got. If you have any interest in the Goetz case, you'll find this book an interesting read. If you have any interest in law and legal philosophy, or you're just curious about how lawyers and judges think, you'll *love* this book. If you're having a career crisis and are of an intellectual bent, Fletcher's book might even get you fantasizing about law school.
