Hornbooks and Study Aids

First Year Courses	Second and Third Year Courses
Civil Procedure Contracts Criminal Law Law School Study and Exam Tips Legal Research Legal Writing Property Torts	Accounting Administrative Law Admiralty American Indian Law Antitrust Antitrust and Intellectual Property Appellate Litigation Art Law Bankruptcy Civil Rights Class Actions Commercial Real Estate Transactions Conflicts Corporate Crime Constitutional Law Copyright Corporate Finance Corporate Tax Corporations Criminal Justice and Cyber Law Criminal Procedure Education Law Elder Law Electronic Commerce Law Employee Benefits Law	Employment Discrimination Entertainment Law Environmental Law European Legal History European Union Law Evidence Family Law Federal Courts and Jurisdiction First Amendment Law Foreign Relations Law Health Law Human Rights Law Immigration Law Income Tax Insurance Law Int'l Environmental Law International Finance Int'l Intellectual Property Int'l Litigation and Arbitration International Law International Taxation International Trade Investment Management Islamic Law Japanese Law Jewish Law Jurisprudence Labor Law	Land Use Law and Economics Laws of War Legal Ethics Legislation Local Government Law Mental Health Law National Security Law Negotiable Instruments Oil and Gas Law Partnership Taxation Patent Law Privacy Law Remedies Roman Law Sales Sarbanes-Oxley Act Secured Transactions Securities Regulation Sex Discrimination Sports Law State and Local Finance State and Local Government Structuring Venture Capital Telecommunications Law Trademarks Trusts and Estates White Collar Crime Zoning

Hornbooks are one volume treatises written primarily for law students on subjects typically covered by law school courses. Unlike casebooks, which are collections of cases (or parts of cases) chosen to help illustrate and stimulate discussion about legal issues, hornbooks attempt to summarize and explain the law in a specific area. Perhaps the best-known hornbooks are those published by West in "West's Hornbook Series," which are easily identifiable by their distinctive green bindings and include titles such as Civil Procedure by Professors Friedenthal, Kane and Miller, and Uniform Commercial Code by Professors White and Summers.

Study guides such as West's Nutshell Series and Black Letter Series, and Aspen Publisher's Examples and Explanations Series, also try to explain the law in a much more straightforward manner than casebooks. Study guides, though, are written in a less scholarly manner than hornbooks and tend to focus on the basic issues without providing detailed analysis. For example, hornbooks are often heavily footnoted, whereas many study guides do not contain any footnotes at all.

Neither hornbooks nor study guides are intended to serve as substitutes for casebooks, but many students find these resources helpful in learning the fundamentals, which, in turn, makes it easier to understand the more complex questions discussed in class and presented on law school exams. Whether to consult a hornbook or a study guide and, if so, which one, will depend on the individual's particular needs, tastes, and circumstances. No title is perfect for every situation. You will probably want to experiment with a variety of hornbooks and study aids in order to find the ones that work best for you.

Set forth above and arranged by subject are some hornbooks and study guides that you may find useful in your studies. All of these books are located in the D'Angelo Law Library Reserve Reading Room, and earlier editions of some titles may be available in the stacks under the same call number.