Course Description: This course will compare the criminal justice systems of a variety of contemporary societies around the world. The primary goal is to provide frameworks or contexts which one can use to help comprehend and critically evaluate a variety of societal responses to crime. Broadly conceived, such responses involve law creation, legal reasoning, law enforcement, and the adjudication of individual behavior in a court of law. The orienting contexts within which the preceding will be examined will be drawn from the disciplines of sociology, legal philosophy, and law. These perspectives will be used to inform a systematic introduction to the predominant legal systems at work in socieites today, i.e. civil law, common law, Islamic law, and socialist law legal systems.