Law and Business: Key Terms and Thinkers

The activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money

A body of enforceable rules governing relationships among individuals and between individuals and their society.

He wrote a two-volume Democracy in America that contained insights and pinpointed the general equality among people. He wrote that inequalities were less visible in America than France.

Will go to court over anything

lawsuit about a contract

-structures come from England
-Common Law roots
-precedent= court decisions made from previous decisions.
-common law= accumulation of precedent
-binding precedent- "let the decision stand"

-statue
-regulations
-caselaw
-constitutional law
-state law
-local law
-zoning
-local codes
-ETC

individual liberties

unions, product safety, labor laws, anti-trust laws

Auto manufacturing safety and standards, environmental protection, contract law

protection laws, internet laws

1. establish our national government
-3 branches of government (legislative, executive, and judiciary)
2. Set up a system of checks and balances
-gridlock is the status quo
-veto
-impeachment
-senate approval of judicial nominees
-judicial review
-amendment of the constitution
3. Guarantee basic individual rights
-bill of rights

-Laws created by congress
-cannot violate the constitution

-generated by courts
-precedent
-stare decisis= binding precedent
-court can override its own precedent

the tendency to decide current cases based on previous rulings

a 1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized state ordered segregation so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal

1954 - The Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, declared that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.

-binding obligations on specific people or companies
-injunction- order not to do something

-regulations created by administrative agencies
-agencies created by congress

-negotiated by executive branch
-ratified by congress (required 2/3rd vote)

the party who is suing

the party being sued

Prohibits certain behavior for the benefit of society.
-Penal code (statue) passed by congress or state legislature
-prosecuted by the government
-seeks to punish behavior
-government not victim is in charge of the litigation
-government gets the fine not the victim

-regulates rights and duties between parties
-does not punish for a crime
-prevailing party gets the relief
-losing party does not got o jail

philosophy of law

the recognition of polictical power, whom citizens obey

Law is what the sovereign says

An unjust law is no law at all

who enforces the law counts more than what is in writing

-common law rule from England
stating that you have no duty to assist someone in peril unless you created the danger
-carey v davis
-osterlind v hill
-tarasoff v regents of the university of California

-plain meaning
-legislative history and purpose
-public policy (what the judge thinks is the right thing)

When the president vetoes a
bill, Congress has one last
chance to make it law: an
override.

1. Part of the executive branch
2. President can fire them
-IRS, FBI, FDA, Nuclear Regulatory commission

-President does not have the power to remove
-FCC, NLRB, FTC, EPA, SEC

enabling legislation
-defines the problem to be solved
-establishes the agency
-defines agency power

-Rule-making
-Administrative rule-making= "Promulgation"

1. Legislative- requires an individual or entity to act a certain way
2. Interpretive- How a regulation is used/enfored

1. Formal
-Congress may require that an agency hold a hearing
2. Informal
-"notice and comment" and eventually publish

"a right without a remedy is merely a suggestion"
-subpoena- an order to appear at a particular place and time
-subpoena duces tecum- bring certain documents or things
-inspection/search

notice ordering someone to appear in court

a court order to produce documents or records

-administrated law judge
-appeal to administrative panel
-file in US District Court

statutory control- provides some limits
political control- can defund or abolish agencies
judicial review- An individual or corp directly harmed by administrative rule, investigation, or adjunction may generally have that action reviewed in federal court

-written May-September 1787
-self government v. Monarchy
- set three branches of government
-27 amendments

18 types of statues congress can pass

The clause in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1) that gives Congress the power to regulate all business activities that cross state lines or affect more than one state or other nations.

Farmer growing too much wheat is taxed because it affects interstate commerce

Gun Free School Zones Act exceeded Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce.

State Statue that discriminates against interstate commerce almost always unconstitutional

Constitution and federal statues are the supreme law of the land

appointment, legislation, foreign policy

Adjudicating cases, Judicial review

A courts willingness to decide issues on constitutional grounds

a court's attitude that it should leave lawmaking to legislators

Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, and Petition

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

No quartering of soldiers

Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures

Criminal Proceedings; Due Process; Eminent Domain; Double Jeopardy; Protection from Self incrimination

Right to a speedy trial

Right to trial by jury

No cruel or unusual punishment

Citizens entitled to rights not listed in the Constitution

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

protected unless it is intended and likely to create imminent lawless action

government may regulate if the rules are reasonable and directly advanced a legitimate government goal

A 1973 Supreme Court decision that avoided defining obscenity by holding that community standards be used to determine whether material is obscene in terms of appealing to a "prurient interest" and being "patently offensive" and lacking in value.

procedural laws that protect the rights of individuals who must deal with the legal system

when government takes public property, it has to pay a fair price

Constitutional requirement that governments act reasonably and that the substance of the laws themselves be fair and reasonable; limits what a government may do.

Power of a government to take private property for public use.

14th amendment clause that prohibits states from denying equal protection under the law, and has been used to combat discrimination
-economic and social regulation (minimal scrutiny)
-Gender (Intermediate scrutiny)
-Race, ethnicity, Fundamental rights (strict scrutiny)

Limits the president to two terms.

Lowered the voting age from 21 to 18

congressional pay raises are not begun until the next election