Week 1: Current Article Analysis Instructions Choose a current article related to this week's material. Review and summarize the article, and then provide an analysis of the article applying the concepts related to this week’s material.

Week 1: Current Article Analysis

Instructions

Choose a current article related to this week's material. Review and summarize the article, and then provide an analysis of the article applying the concepts related to this week’s material.

This assignment should be written in APA style and should include the following.

1. Two pages in length (not including the title page and reference page)
2. Double-spaced
3. 12-point font

All papers will automatically be submitted to Turnitin.

LegalEthics.com         http://www.legalethics.com

Links to an external site.     This is a site for searching articles, laws, opinions, and other postings related to laws and ethics.

Week 1: Lesson

Legal Environment, Business Ethics, and Judicial Systems

Welcome to Week 1!

We begin our study of the legal, political, and ethical dimensions of business with an overview of legal thinking and the American legal system, along with its impact on business activity in both our country and the international environment. Our study expands beyond the pure legal environment to include ethical and social responsibilities of business management and how it impacts our day-to-day life activities.

We will study the gamut of legal concepts from product liability to contracts to intellectual property rights to antitrust and consumer protection. Underpinning all of these legal concepts, however, will be the ethical issues of our system.

In Week 1, we begin the process of sorting out how we understand business and social responsibility. Does business have a social responsibility beyond the maximization of profits, and if so, how does business fulfill its corporate ethical and social responsibility? We also review the structure of the American legal system, the sources and classifications of law, and the adversary process that dramatizes our way of life in this country.

Week 1 Objectives

2

Analyze and understand from the application of documented and current world news the legal implications that businesses face from both the internal policies and procedures.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Classify the range and severity of sanctions for violation of federal environmental laws.

4

Analyze how decision-making from an individual and societal ethical perspective affects your bottom line and the bottom line of shareholders as you gain knowledge of organization's corporate responsibility.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

The Business and Legal Environment in America Changes With Lightning Speed Driven by the Internet

The commercial business world changed in 1989–1990, and by necessity, the legal environment was forced to follow. These changes were driven by the impact of information and acceleration of the globalization of the world’s economy. Obviously, the internet put everyone in immediate contact, no matter where people were located. The commercial world saw rapid changes as jobs, products, contracting, financial payments, and so on went global. The result is that today’s commercial world moves with lightning speed and is ferociously competitive. The international legal environment had no choice but to follow.

The American legal system is well established, but businesses had to adjust to the new era of information technology. If you file a lawsuit in the New York court system today, your case and the response of your opponent will be available through the internet within a few days. Legislative organizations at the federal, state, and county levels have passed new legislation to try to keep up with business and legal changes, and under our common law system, court rulings have also been a part of these changes. In this course, you will learn the current state of the American and international legal systems.

Legal Reasoning

Critical legal thinking uses the issue, rule, application, and conclusion method (IRAC) as outlined in the following.

• I = What is the legal issue in the case?
• R = What is the rule (law) of the case?
• A = What is the court's analysis and rationale?
• C = What was the conclusion or outcome of the case?

(Private Law Tutor Publishing, n.d.)

The Legal Environment of Business

The legal environment of business can be defined in various ways. For the purpose of the course, the study of the legal environment can be outlined as follows.

• A study of legal reasoning, critical-thinking skills, ethical norms, and the interaction of ethical and legal issues
• The study of the legal process in our current legal system and the access to alternate dispute resolution
• The formation of administrative agencies and their effect on the business world
• The review of certain areas of public and private law, such as securities regulations, antitrust law, employment law, environmental law, and so on, with an emphasis on the process that business managers use to relate to both private individuals and government employees
• An examination of the international dimensions of the legal environment

In our study of the legal environment of business in this course, we will characterize and focus our thoughts on the following five features.

1. Critical-thinking skills
2. Legal literacy
3. An understanding that the law is dynamic, not static
4. A recognition and study of real-world problems
5. The interdisciplinary nature of our discussion of the legal environment

Sources and Classification of Law

The founders of our country created the United States of America with three direct sources of law: legislative, executive, and common law court rulings. They later added a fourth source: administrative agencies. These four direct sources of law can be exercised at three levels of government: federal, state, and local.

The classification of laws can broadly be defined as either statutory law, which is created by a legislative body, or case law, which results from judicial interpretation of constitutional or statutory law. Further classification details of law include the following.

• Criminal law: Federal and state statutes prohibiting wrongful conduct
• Civil law: Governs litigation between private parties
• Public law: Deals with the relationship of government to individual citizens
• Private law: Deals with the enforcement of private obligations and duties
• Substantive law: Creates and regulates legal rights
• Procedural law: Rules that set forth the enforcement of substantive rights in a court of law
• Cyber law: Traditional categories of law noted above (over the last 20 years, these have begun to be transmitted on the internet)

Jurisdiction Versus Venue in the American Legal System

Jurisdiction is the power of a court to hear a legal dispute and render a binding decision. Jurisdiction is either original, usually within the purview of a trial court, or appellate, where a court has the power to review and possibly reverse a prior ruling of the original court. Jurisdiction is further defined in terms of rulings over

• persons;
• property; and
• varied other subject matter.

Venue is the location where a legal case is brought and requires said location to be as convenient as possible for all parties. If you live in Houston, TX, and get in a dispute with someone who also lives in Houston, the dispute will be heard in a Houston court. If you go to Dallas, TX, and file in a court there, the case will be moved back to Houston.

The Adversary Process as It Flows Through the American Legal System

The adversarial legal system in our country involves litigation in which a judge or jury hears evidence and arguments presented by all sides in a legal case and then makes an objective decision based on the facts and the law as presented by both sides. There is a lot of criticism of this adversary process in our American legal system. The criticism always includes several major elements: that it is time-consuming and costly and that due to the adversarial nature, it can favor litigants with lots of money, political connections, or tricky facts.

The key to the American legal system is the flow of cases through the courts in both criminal and civil cases. The following chart outlines the process of a civil case in the American legal system.

Image Description Links to an external site.

Your Business Ethics Versus the Moral Standards of the Business Community

We close out Week 1 with a review of the question of ethics versus morality. The basic questions are, “What is the definition of ethics?” and “What is the definition of morality?”

• Everyone has his or her own ethics. As you grow up, you develop ideas about what is right and what is wrong in your head. Your ethics are a matter of your personal beliefs.
• Morality or moral standards is the recognition of what is right and what is wrong in an organization.

Hopefully, your ethics fit with the moral standards of the groups with which you associate as you go through life.

The basic theories of ethics and morality include the following.

• Business ethics
• Social responsibility of business
• Consequential theories of ethics
• Deontological theories of ethics (your duty)
• Humanist theories of ethics (how they impact our day-to-day actions)
• Individual codes of ethics
• Business codes of ethics
• Industry codes of ethics
• Professional codes of ethics (licensed doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc.)

References

Private Law Tutoring. (n.d.). IRAC method. https://www.iracmethod.com/irac-methodology