Introduction the Law

SOURCES OF CONTEMPORARY LAW

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

America’s greatest legal achievement was the writing of the United States Constitution in 1787. It is the supreme law of the land. Any law that conflicts with it is void.

BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT

The founding fathers sought a division of government power. They did not want all power centralized in a king or anyone else. And so, the Constitution divides legal authority into three pieces: legislative, executive, and judicial power.

• Legislative power gives the ability to create new laws. In Article I, the Constitution gives this power to the Congress which is a comprised of two chambers—a Senate and a House of Representatives. Voters in all 50 states elect representatives who go to Washington DC, to serve in the Congress and debate new legal ideas.
• Executive power is the authority to enforce laws. Article II of the Constitution establishes the president as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and the head of the executive branch of the federal government.
• Judicial power gives the right to interpret laws and determine their validity. Article III places the Supreme Court at the head of the judicial branch of the federal government.

STATUTES

The second important source of law is statutory law. The Constitution gave to the US Congress the power to pass laws on various subjects. These laws are called statutes, and they can cover absolutely any topic so long as they do not violate the Constitution.

COMMON LAW

Binding legal ideas often come from the courts. Judges generally follow precedent. When courts decide a case, they tend to apply the legal rules the other courts have use in similar cases.

COURT ORDERS

Judges have the authority to issue court orders that place binding obligations on specific people or businesses. A court can both compel a party to and prohibit it from doing something. And injunction is an example of a court order. Injunctions can require people to do things, like perform on a contract or remove a nuisance.

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

In a society as large and diverse as ours, the executive and legislative branches of government cannot oversee all aspects of commerce. Administrative agencies do day-to-day work based on rules established by the executive branch. Agencies have the power to create laws called regulations.

TREATIES

A treaty is an agreement between two or more sovereign countries.

CLASSIFICATIONS

We have seen where laws originate. Now we need to classify the various types of laws.

CRIMINAL LAW

Criminal law prohibits certain behavior for the benefit of society.

CIVIL LAW

Civil law or regulation the rights and duties between parties.

LAW AND MORALITY

Law is different from morality, yet the two are obviously linked.

JURISPRUDENCE

LEGAL POSITIVISM

this philosophy can be simply stated: law is what the sovereign says it is. The sovereign is the recognize political power who citizens obey, so in the United States, both state and federal governments are sovereign. “ law is what the sovereign says”.

NATURAL LAW

Natural law is a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or a positive law. “ An unjust law is no law at all”.

LEGAL REALISM

Legal realist claim it does not matter what is written as law. What counts is who enforces that law and by what process it is enforced. “Who enforces the law counts more than what is in writing”.

Source: Essentials of Business Law, 6th Edition

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