The Modern Law of Evidence - Adrian Keane > Reviews > Law of evidence

Author's product rating:   

Degree of Information	High
How easy was it to read / get information from	An effort
How interesting was the book?	Mildly stimulating
How useful was it?	Pretty useful
Value for money	Good

Advantages:	Comprehensive, up - to - date, academic critic
Disadvantages:	sometimes too comprehensive in areas

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

this was the recommended text for my uni degree law of evidence model. This book is very comprehensive and i found it quite detailed. in the end i only skimmed through the chapters and picked out the main cases and main points and used another book for my reading.

This book is one of the most up-to-date evidence books out, it is well laid out and index is easy to use. All major areas of evidence law are covered in this book including up to date info on bad charactor evidence and hearsay which has changed since the criminal justice act 2003. It also has chapters on the defendant, victim and 3rd party rights, opinion evidence, confessions and covers all the basics such as relevance, admissiblity and burdens of proof.

The pace codes and legislation in general is very detailed throughout and this book could be used without a legislation manual. In particular i fould the pace codes easy to understand as keane took each one in turn defined what the content was and then relayed the appropiate article or alternative/ supporting legilation.

The chapters on character evidence are extremely well written, and make up a considerable chunk of this book. It is divided up into good charactor and bad charator as opposed to the victim and defendant as in some other books.

Keane doesnt provide any further reading information at the end of the chapters, however throughout academic works are refered to, so it is just a case of picking out the references from the text. i would recommend reading a less comprehensive book 1st before reading this one.

Its good value for money and would be useful in practice therefore not purely confined to using at uni or school. This book also contains quite a bit of academic analysis and comment which would be useful for essays and for getting the higher grades in exams.

The book considers modern and old case law in light of the human rights act 1998 and the European Convention on human rights 1950, and considers how such legislation could affect the evidence legal system which has stood for so long.