Intro to American Criminal Law (Part 1) - What is a Crime?

In this class, we will dive deep into the parts that make a crime and a general overview of many underlying concepts of criminal law (Actus Reus (the voluntary act) Mistake of Fact, Crime of Omission, the Mens Rea (the criminal intent), and several other interesting ideas).

What is a crime? We will look at the underlying elements that make up a crime: Actus Reus, Mens Rea, Concurrence, and Causation. Almost every crime is made up of these four elements. We will get a concrete understanding of what each of those four parts are, and we will explore other factors in crimes that will increase our understanding of the topic.

I will provide videos for the course that will explain each topic along with practice story problems (called fact patterns in law) to help understand each concept. Students will be instructed to listen to a brief lesson, pause the video and try the practice problems themselves, then unpause the video to listen to the answers. Students should pay attention to the thinking behind the answers, not just the answers themselves.