American Law in a Global Context is an elegant and erudite introduction to the American legal system from a global persepctive. There is no basic book that introduces the foreign lawyer who has already studied the law of foreign jurisdictions to fundamental concepts of American law and legal practice. This book fills that void. Using a comparative approach, George P. Fletcher and Steve Sheppard introduce underlying principles of common and civil law, constitutional, criminal, and public law, and property and procedure. Designed to help the foreign student grasp the basic ideas of pedagogy, legal institutions and substantive law in the US, appendices include an introduction to the common law method, instruction on how to read a case, the interpretation of statutes, and an introduction to the Federal system and US courts systems. A must-own reference source for LLM students, undergraduates, and students of US law in other countries.