The Legal Environment and Business Law Pdf Free

Overview of The Legal Environment and Business Law Pdf Free

The law has different meanings as well as different functions. Philosophers have considered questions of justice and law for centuries, and several different approaches or schools of legal thought have emerged. In this chapter, we will look at those different meanings and approaches and consider how social and political dynamics interact with the ideas that animate the various schools of legal thought. We will also look at the typical sources of “positive law” in the United States and how some of those sources take precedence over others and establish some basic differences between the American legal system and other legal systems.

 

In a nation, the law can serve to:

(1) keep the peace,

(2) maintain the status quo,

(3) preserve individual rights,

(4) protect minorities against majorities,

(5) promote social justice and

(6) bring about orderly social change.

 

Some legal systems serve these purposes better than others. Although a nation governed by an authoritarian government can keep the peace and maintain the status quo, it can also oppress minorities or political opponents (for example, Burma, Zimbabwe, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein). Under colonialism, European nations often imposed peace on countries whose borders were arbitrarily created by those same European nations. For several centuries before the 20th century, empires were built by Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. With respect to the functions of law, the empire may have kept the peace, largely by force, but it changed the status quo and rarely promoted the rights of native peoples or social justice within the colonized nation.

Topics this Edition

• Chapter 1: Introduction to Law and Legal Systems
• Chapter 2: Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics
• Chapter 3: Courts and the Legal Process
• Chapter 4: Constitutional Law and US Commerce
• Chapter 5: Administrative Law
• Chapter 6: Criminal Law
• Chapter 7: Introduction to Tort Law
• Chapter 8: Introduction to Contract Law
• Chapter 9: The Agreement
• Chapter 10: Real Assent
• Chapter 11: Consideration
• Chapter 12: Legality
• Chapter 13: Form and Meaning
• Chapter 14: Third-Party Rights
• Chapter 15: Discharge of Obligations
• Chapter 16: Remedies
• Chapter 17: Introduction to Sales and Leases
• Chapter 18: Title and Risk of Loss
• Chapter 19: Performance and Remedies
• Chapter 20: Products Liability
• Chapter 21: Bailments and the Storage, Shipment, and Leasing of Goods
• Chapter 22: Nature and Form of Commercial Paper
• Chapter 23: Negotiation of Commercial Paper
• Chapter 24: Holder in Due Course and Defenses