Q: What is law?
✓✓ -Definitions based on perspective- many definitions because law is
mostly gray, depends on each person, rules what is acceptable or
unacceptable, reflect what society wants, set of rules/ideals to govern
society, every society has different rules
Q: Why do we need law?
✓✓ Maintain order, if there were no law it would be chaos, tells us what
we can and can't do, your rights, allow awareness of rules when written
down, understand rules, rules reflect what society demands, keeps us in
order
Q: What is the general purpose of law?
✓✓ To keep society in order, maintain a structure we can live in
Q: What are the two sources of law?
✓✓ Primary and Secondary Sources
Q: Primary Sources
✓✓ binding-must follow all, written down, most important because they
are the actual law, ex-statutes, constitutions, cases, regulation, case
opinion
Q: Secondary Sources
,✓✓ not binding, explains the law, ex-law journals/textbooks, sit in office
and write about law is an opinion, first place people look to get law,
normally primary sources are poorly written and secondary sources help
people to better understand
Q: Should law be a part of a business strategy?
✓✓ Yes, needs to look at laws that regulate it, think about laws every day,
businesses are heavily regulated, especially oil and energy, must factor
law into business strategy
Q: Is it ok for you to use the law to your advantage?
✓✓ - absolutely okay, get deductions for tax returns, "legal loopholes"
Q: Is it okay for a corporation to use the law to their advantage? Why or
Why not? And is it an ethical issue?
✓✓ -depends on ethics, hold corporations to a higher standard, only
allowed at certain times, raises ethical questions-should they not can they,
law is grey so you need ethics
-depends on ethics, only allowed at certain times
-Yes, it's all about ethical questions-should they not can they
Q: A Good Legal System 4 Requirements
✓✓ 1. Certainty
2. Flexibility
3. Knowability
4. Reasonableness
Q: Certainty
,✓✓ -allows consistency, we like to predict things, don't want uncertainty,
want to know changes and predict if win or lose
-Pros- predictability and stability
-Cons- not up to date with society, if you can't change that's bad, want to
be able to change
Q: Flexibility
✓✓ -we can change law as society changes, procedure for flexibility, gray
area born here
-Cons- too much gray area, don't want all laws to be flexible, need some
certainty, too much flexibility leads to instability, flexibility and certainty
should be in balance
Q: Knowability
✓✓ -accessible to public and experts, available, every law that governs you
can look it up, no secret laws, lawyers exist because we need experts to
interpret laws
-Cons- how do we measure it?-don't know, told no secret laws, hoping
there isn't any
Q: Reasonableness
✓✓ -society thinks it's a reasonable rule to follow, allusive-everyday
person, the average person, most important of the four-if society doesn't
deem reasonable then don't need the other three because won't follow, if
don't think taxes are reasonable they won't follow it
-Cons- hard to define, depends on person, IDK, circumstantial, serves as
moral minimum, can have negative impact because you want people to
have a higher standard
Q: The 5 Classifications of Law
, ✓✓ 1. Subject Matter
2. Case Law v. Statutory Law
3. Civil v. Criminal Law
4. Public v. Private Law
5. Federal v. State
Q: Subject Matter
✓✓ areas of law, textbook, statues, efficient, good for legal experts, law
school=generalize, reality is that you are an expert in one or two subject
matters
Q: Case Law v. Statutory Law
✓✓ -Case Law- out of court room, aka common law, court=judge, facts,
rules come out of it, specific and narrow
-Statutory Law- out of state legislatures and Congress, written broadly, try
to anticipate or fix, can't be specific because it needs to cover as many
situations as it can, interpret statutory in court=get specific and narrow it
down
Q: Civil v. Criminal Law-most different
✓✓ -Criminal- wrongs to society, plaintiff is the state because it gives out
punishments, small jail, punishment
-Civil- everything else, two individuals fight in court-didn't wrong society,
sue-get money or equitable, remedy
Q: Tort System
✓✓ to make people whole again, can land in court twice, civil and
criminal, a civil=tort equivalent of crime, broke a criminal and civil law
Q: When Crimes and Tort parallel