Free summaries
Law & Criminology
33 public-domain law & criminology books, summarised. Page 1 of 1.
An Essay on Professional Ethics: Second Edition
George Sharswood
The legal profession demands more than technical skill; it requires a deep, unwavering commitment to moral integrity. This classic treatise explores the ethical foundation upon which a life in the law must be built.
A Plea for the Criminal: Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory Science
James Leslie Allan Kayll
A criminal is treated not as a monster, but as a human problem society helps create and can still help mend.
Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students
Hans Gross
A cold, meticulous gaze turns toward the courtroom, stripping away legal abstractions to reveal the fallible human minds—misleading voices, deceptive hands, and flawed perceptions—that truly dictate the balance of justice.
Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning;: by Prussic Acid, Strychnia, Antimony, Arsenic, and Aconita. Including the trials of Tawell, W. Palmer, Dove, Madeline Smith, Dr. Pritchard, Smethurst, and Dr. Lamson, with chemical introduction and notes on the poisons used
G. Lathom (George Lathom) Browne
Victorian courtroom drama meets the birth of forensic science in a meticulous survey of nineteenth-century murder trials by poison. Here, pioneering expert testimony and chemical analysis clash directly with devious criminal schemes.
The Principles of Masonic Law: A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages and Landmarks of Freemasonry
Albert Gallatin Mackey
A system of ancient custom and written rule governs the inner workings of a worldwide brotherhood.
Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso
Gina Lombroso
This volume offers a concise distillation of a controversial, foundational theory in criminology, detailing how biological traits were once believed to dictate criminal behavior. It provides a window into the nineteenth-century effort to pathologize the impulse to break the law.
Jurisprudence
Salmond, John W. (John William), Sir
A steady, comprehensive examination of the mechanics of law, revealing how abstract principles of justice transform into the concrete rules that govern human societies.
The Science of Fingerprints: Classification and Uses
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation
A definitive guide to friction ridges and classification systems, this manual transforms the microscopic curves of human fingertips into a rigid, universally applicable science of personal identity.
The Art of Cross-Examination: With the Cross-Examinations of Important Witnesses in Some Celebrated Cases
Francis L. (Francis Lewis) Wellman
Cross-examination is the most delicate and hazardous instrument in the legal arsenal, a trial of wits where a single misstep can ruin a case. Mastery of this art requires not just knowledge of the law, but a profound understanding of human nature and the composure to hold one’s fire until the perfect moment.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law
Roscoe Pound
Law must remain stable to safeguard society, yet it must continuously adapt to human needs. Balancing these competing demands requires a clear philosophy of how justice actually operates.
Copyright Basics
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Ownership over creative expression does not begin in a courtroom or government office, but at the exact moment a line of text, a melody, or a drawing is fixed in tangible form.
An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists, by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice: With an Account of the Trial of Jesus
Simon Greenleaf
A distinguished jurist brings the methods of the courtroom to the Gospel narratives, treating the apostles as witnesses and their accounts as testimony subject to the rules of legal evidence.
A Selection of Cases on the Law of Torts
Unknown
Legal duties do not spring from abstract sentiment, but from the hard boundaries of proximity, common sense, and statutory obligation. This foundational collection maps the evolving doctrines of civil wrongs across American and English jurisprudence, tracing how courts balance individual liberty against the…
The Positive School of Criminology: Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901
Enrico Ferri
A provocative challenge to the traditional justice system, this work argues that crime is a natural, predictable phenomenon rooted in environment and biology rather than an abstract failure of free will.
Finger prints
Francis Galton
The human hand carries a permanent, immutable signature written in the skin itself, a biological cipher that remains constant from childhood to old age. This foundational work transforms those hidden patterns into a scientific tool for identification.
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
William Healy
By peering into the minds of chronic deceivers, this clinical study unravels the complex, often tragic motives behind those who weave elaborate webs of fiction to navigate their own lives.
Crime: Its Cause and Treatment
Clarence Darrow
Human behavior, like every physical phenomenon in the universe, is governed by absolute laws of cause and effect, making moral blame a cruel illusion.
Science and the Criminal
C. Ainsworth (Charles Ainsworth) Mitchell
The relentless duel between criminal cunning and scientific investigation finds its chronicler in a guide to early forensic tools, miscarriages of justice, and courtroom battles.
Studies in Forensic Psychiatry
Bernard Glueck
This clinical exploration probes the thin, shifting boundary between criminal behavior and mental disorder, challenging the legal systems that struggle to distinguish between the two.
The Right to Privacy
Samuel D. (Samuel Dennis) Warren
Modern technology and a predatory press have created a crisis where the sanctity of the individual is under siege. This foundational legal argument asserts that the right to be let alone is a fundamental necessity of civilized life.
The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases
Henry Herbert Goddard
A pioneering examination of three murder cases, this study argues that many offenders are not morally "evil" but are instead individuals with the mental age of children, trapped in adult bodies.
Criminal Types
V. M. (Vincent Myron) Masten
A blunt, uncompromising indictment of early twentieth-century American penal policy that rejects both soft-hearted reformism and superficial academic theories in favor of strict, disciplined accountability.
International Law
George Grafton Wilson
A systematic overview of the rules governing modern state relations, tracing how global custom and legal precedents turn sovereign conflicts into predictable codifications.
Disputed Handwriting: An exhaustive, valuable, and comprehensive work upon one of the most important subjects of to-day. With illustrations and expositions for the detection and study of forgery by handwriting of all kinds
Jerome Buell Lavay
A pen stroke leaves behind more than simple letters; it captures the subtle physical mechanics and unconscious habits of the human hand.
Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing
James Burt Miner
The link between limited mental capacity and criminal behavior remains a persistent point of contention. This study examines how early psychological testing sought to formalize that relationship through statistical classification.
Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Mandating commercial software filters on library computers inevitably blocks vast amounts of constitutionally protected speech, forcing public institutions to violate the First Amendment rights of their patrons.
The Criminal & the Community
James Devon
Punishment fails because society studies abstract theories rather than the living person, mistaking environmental misery for inherent depravity and institutional routine for genuine reform.
A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations
Mackintosh, James, Sir
This intellectual roadmap argues that justice is not merely a legal construct but a permanent, objective interest for all nations, woven into the very fabric of human nature. It serves as a foundational lecture series designed to reconcile the cold requirements of civil law with the enduring moral necessities of…
The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice
Arthur Cheney Train
This examination of the American criminal justice system offers a rare, behind-the-scenes view of the law in motion, written by an insider who knows exactly how the gears of justice grind.
Concerning Justice
Lucilius A. (Lucilius Alonzo) Emery
Justice is not a static ideal, but a delicate, ever-shifting equilibrium between the necessary freedom of the individual and the essential safety of the collective. This inquiry explores how that balance is maintained through law.
Supplementary Copyright Statutes, US Copy. Office
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Navigating the complexities of intellectual property law requires a clear understanding of the shifting boundaries between protected creativity and the public domain. These official government circulars provide the definitive framework for such discovery.
The Curiosities and Law of Wills
John Proffatt
Behind the dry mechanics of estate planning lies a long history of human eccentricities, spiritual anxieties, and judicial hair-splitting over final wishes.
Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee
R. M. (Ronald Macmillan) Algie
A parliamentary committee examines the moral climate of 1950s New Zealand, seeking a balance between legislative control and expert guidance to address rising anxieties over adolescent behavior and the influence of mass media.