Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach is a criminal law text written from a comparative perspective, featuring cases and materials on the central issues in criminal law from two representative common law and civil law jurisdictions, the United States and Germany. The idea for this book emerged from several years of searching for a format that allows teachers and scholars to unlock the potential of comparative analysis. Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach does not attempt to present an encyclopedic overview of the world’s criminal law systems.1 It is both narrower and deeper in conception; it presents a systematic and comprehensive comparative analysis of the substantive criminal law of two jurisdictions, covering both the fundamental principles of the so-called general part and a selection of offenses drawn from the so-called special part of criminal law.2 The present book, then, is about criminal law first, and about comparative law second. Its primary audience is criminal law scholars and teachers interested in a deeper understanding of their own field, not card carrying comparativists. It presupposes no familiarity with either U.S. or German criminal law—or with any other criminal law system, for that matter.3 All foreign-language sources have been translated into English.4 Cases and materials are accompanied by heavily cross-referenced introductions and notes that place them within the framework of each country’s criminal law system and highlight issues ripe for comparative analysis. Throughout, readers are exposed to alternative approaches to familiar problems in criminal law, and as a result will have a chance to see “their” country’s criminal law doctrine, on specific issues and in general, from the critical distance of comparative analysis. The bulk of the materials is drawn from U.S. and German criminal law; materials from other jurisdictions, common and civil, have been included where appropriate—notably from Canadian criminal law, which has come to occupy an intermediate position between common law and civil law approaches in general, and between U.S. and German criminal law in particular. Of course each reader is free—and, in fact, encouraged—to adapt the text to her needs, by highlighting and exploring contrasts and comparisons with her domestic criminal law system.