The title alone\u2014\u201cAnnual Review of Criminal Procedure\u201d\u2014plants a flag. It is not conditioned. There are no caveats. It swings for the fences. Referring to it as merely \u201cauthoritative\u201d seems kind of shabby. At close to 1,300 pages and footnoted to within an inch of its life, it could well be the print embodiment of sui generis. Upwards of 11,000 copies are produced and distributed each year. Judges read and refer to it. So do prosecutors and defense attorneys. Pro se litigants\u2014many of them prisoners\u2014rely on it. In a pinch it could double as a doorstop. Which begs the question: Why spend the next few pages discussing its shortcomings? After all, most are baked in. Its yearly publication date, for example, coincides with the exact start of its obsolescence. But its most prominent shortcoming is worth some time. It\u2019s also built in. But it\u2019s less like a minor-flaw-not-of-its-own-making and more like a tragic one. Think of it as the inevitable result of its doomed mission: documenting the law as it is, not necessarily as
\nit should be.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the law as it is and the law as it should be are one and the same; other times they\u2019re more like overlapping Venn diagrams. Often, they are neither. Sometimes the law as it is can be settled. Other times not. Sometimes it\u2019s correct; often it is flawed. Occasionally it is just; often it isn\u2019t. The law as it should be is both more static than the law as it is, but also more elusive. Static in the sense that what is just and true can be envisioned and articulated; elusive, because the legal path to getting there is often ill-defined, dimly lit. Until the day that it\u2019s not. To get to that place\u2014to truth, to justice, to the law as it should be\u2014\u201cwe need all angles, all distances, all perspectives,\u201d U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves recently observed.\n\t\t\n\t\t\t