Chapter 2 sets up the criminal law as a relationship between the laws of evidence, the law of procedure and the substantive law of crime. Evidence and procedure are discussed summarily in Chapter 2 and the following twelve chapters deal with substantive criminal law doctrine. The chapters discussing the substantive criminal law are more or less conventional. They progress from general principles of responsibility in Chapter 3 to specific application through the doctrines of criminal offences in Chapters 4 to 10. They progress from analysis of offences to an analysis of defences in Chapters 11 to 13.
Rush employs in the text.
First, I was interested in the decision to move from less serious to more serious crimes. Conventionally, crimes against the person are dealt with before property crime, and the progression is from the most serious to the least serious crimes. Rush inverts this progression. He discusses crimes of property before crimes against the person and he discusses theft and larceny before violent crimes of property, and assault and rape before homicide. In most texts, the law of homicide is used to introduce the concepts of actus reus and mens rea.