Understanding Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment: A Comprehensive Guide

Anderson’s Business Law: An Introduction

As a comprehensive resource in the field of business law, Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment is a cornerstone text for students and professionals alike. This section explores the significance of this text both as a foundational educational resource and as a practical guide for real-world application of the concepts of business law and the legal environment.
Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment is a compilation of various aspects of business law that are essential to every legal studies and business law student. The text delves into topics that range from an introduction of the law itself to tort law, crimes, intellectual property, contracts, sales and sales protection rights, negotiable instruments, agency, general liability law, environmental law, antitrust law, bankruptcy, secured transactions, and business law at the international level . It serves as a foundation for other textbooks and academic literature that have been published in the field of business law.
As with its breadth of topics, Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment addresses these concepts in varying degrees of complexity. Some concepts are basic, and therefore, it serves as an adequate resource for students and others who are initiating their studies in the field. For more advanced learners or those needing to perform advanced ratings of the law, Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment offers advanced insight and references. It is a text that remains pertinent not only in the academic community but also in the world of practice, as it provides an excellent reference source for practitioners and others that are seeking information about the legal environment of business.

Basics of Business Law

The depths of Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the basic principles of this specialized branch of the law. These core concepts include contracts, torts, agency, and the regulatory environment that governs business operations.
Contracts
A contract is an agreement – generally in writing – between two or more parties to perform certain actions. A legally enforceable contract must possess several key elements. Any contract outside of the bounds of these elements will not be enforceable.
Torts
A tort is a civil wrong or breach of duty. In the context of Anderson’s Business Law, the most common form of tort is negligence, which is inflicting damage on another person due to a failure to act with "reasonable care."
Agency
An agency is a consensual arrangement in which one person represents another person for some purpose. In a business context, the most common example of an agency is an employer-employee relationship.
Regulatory Environment
The regulatory environment consists of any and all rules, regulations and laws with which a business must comply in order to successfully operate within a particular jurisdiction.

Examining the Legal Environment of Business

Understanding the context of business transactions is essential to understanding the law of business transactions because it is the facts and circumstances of a situation that determine whether a transaction can occur and whether it is enforceable if it does occur. With so much information to process, figuring out which parts of the law to learn first can be difficult. While part of the answer depends on the circumstances of what you are trying to accomplish, it is going to be helpful to get a general overview of the subject so that you know where to look for the details of the law.
To understand basic legal concepts important to business, Anderson’s Business Law & the Legal Environment provides a roadmap to be used to organize and help visualize the information:
When examined in this order, the map is as follows:
A business’ entire environment is important to understanding how to make money for its owners and is vital to business survival. The key to doing this is breaking down the business environment into sub-environments. These are:
We use the court system to resolve disputes, regulate the economy by enforcing the rules of commerce, and limit the power of government. Our system of courts helps promote economic growth by providing predictable rules of commerce, the enforcement necessary to create stability, and a means of enforcing contracts. The court system also establishes a system of privacy and pro-business regulatory constraints to limit the chance of being sued by one’s competitors.
The relationship between contracts and administrative regulation may be the most interesting, and the most frustrating, to business owners. Business owners benefit from the administrative regulation of the economy when regulators use them as boundless contracts to govern their business relationships, often without having any idea they are subject to government regulations. While this helps a business, regulators often do not know they are enabling the contract relationships when they regulate. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues regulations to protect the environment and consumers from unsafe products but they also create new private-law relationships and bonds of trust. Noncompliance with environmental laws can impair a business’ reputation and cause downstream financial damage that has consequences well beyond any penalties the businesses face for noncompliance.
The world has changed a great deal since the first edition of Anderson’s Business Law & the Legal Environment was published, and the book has evolved with it. The integration of technology into human culture continues to change our world at incredible speed, and the law is struggling to keep up with these changes. These changes also directly affect how we teach and learn the law. When I attend meetings of business law faculty forums, we talk about how we are having to completely change the way we teach, both to keep up with the speed of change and because many students already know about what we are trying to talk to them about. Thanks to the Internet, our students all know the law. In one study by Oxford university Press, of the 80% of students who "looked up material" of their own accord, only 10% were looking up something for their current class. This means that our students have already heard about every topic we cover in our classes, whether it is contracts or consumer protection. Our job is to make sense of the material they already know so that they can see how it applies to what we are talking about.

Notable Cases Covered

A very thorough addition to Anderson’s text is its presentation of relevant, detailed case studies. These case studies are effectively incorporated into the text for the purpose of examining notable legal rulings and their implications for businesses. Some interesting case studies from the text are summarized below.
"Three Employees Who Stole Company’s Secrets Sued in New York" examines the legal basis for the suit and the litigation process itself, as well as the final decision. The case illustrates the costs of not having an ironclad non-compete clause, while providing some suggestions on how to avoid similar cases in the future.
"Physician is Sued by Patients Who Increased their Risks of Contracting Rabies" looks at how a physician’s duty of care may be affected by the actions of the patient. The decision and discussion about liability are essential to understanding the responsibilities of those in health care or other potentially high risk industries.
"Physicians Can Lose Their License Over Impaired Job Performance" explores a specific standard for determining impairment, what qualifies as impairment, and how that impairment can affect job performance. The implications are particularly useful for physicians or those who work with heavy machinery.
"Employee Not Admitted to Bar Sued Company That Hired Him" examines the liability companies have when hiring individuals who do not meet certain standards, and details the litigation process and outcome. This case study is relevant for any business that interviews and hires employees.

Business Law in Practice

Every manager and entrepreneur are presented with various situations involving legal concepts on a frequent basis. As managers and business owners face legal issues, it is crucial to have a base knowledge of the laws that will affect their decisions and how those decisions will impact the business.
Some of the examples below illustrate the application of principles taught within Anderson’s Business Law in Managing the Legal Environment in the real-world.
Example 1: Legal liability
A social media company is running a contest to encourage people to promote their newly-released line of children’s undergarments via social media. The Facebook post included an image of a child modeling the underwear with the caption, "This is not your underwear. Stop wearing it." A large number Instagram users re-posted the Facebook post. The company realized that posting images of minors required consent under each state’s law. Due to their lack of knowledge of this law, the company is now facing multiple legal actions concerning the posting of the photos.
Example 2: Formation of contract
Two individuals attend a football match at a local stadium. Neither has tickets so they purchase tickets from the website SeatGeek, an online platform for secondary ticket purchasing. At the top of the webpage, in very small print, is a sentence which states that the terms and conditions, which the customer must agree to before completing the purchase , include; a non-refund policy for any game cancellations, an agreement to transfer the tickets at no cost to SeatGeek in the event of a cancellation, and the requirement to take any disputes to arbirtation. The two spectators purchased two tickets on a Saturday to attend the game the following Friday. On Tuesday, the team cancels the game due to unsatisfactory field conditions. All tickets for the game, including those purchased through SeatGeek, were refunded. In the event that the stadium had not been able to refund the money paid for the tickets, the two spectators would have been required to allow the tickets to be transferred to SeatGeek without compensation even though they never intended to proceed with the purchase.
Example: Making informed decisions
An entrepreneur founded a technology start-up. While incorporating the business, the entrepreneur assumed that the incorporation fees would be deductible, but he was uncertain. In his discussions with his business advisor he was not made aware of the legal limitations on the deductibility of incorporation fees. The cost of incorporating a business in Illinois is $150 regardless of the company’s size. If the company had been substantially larger, it may have been able to deduct all of the incorporation fees for that year depending on its income. By not being made aware of the deduction, the entrepreneur was left making an uninformed decision.

The Influence of Ethics on Business Law

Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment is not just a resource for understanding the technicalities of business law; it also places significant emphasis on ethics. The book expounds on how ethical considerations are intertwined with legal issues, as they often impact decision-making in a business environment. In fact, in many instances, there exists a grey area in which legal regulation remains silent on a particular business practice or conduct, and those factors that define ethical behavior become even more relevant.
The text provides numerous examples of how ethical perspectives can influence the adjudication of a given legal matter. In other words, if two businesses are locked in a dispute, the way the parties set out their case can impact the outcome of the case. For example, it can be said that when the law is not clear, the party engaging in a conduct that is purported to be legal but is also contrary to the spirit of the law is more likely to face scrutiny from the judicial system. Moreover, some actions such as entry into a contract with persons who are known to be of diminished capacity, or the omission of material facts at the time of contracting are certain to be questioned by courts.
Thus, ethical conduct is an important consideration when addressing legal matters. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., in an article published in the Harvard Law Review, observed: "There are people who feel that the law should not turn aside lightly from its ‘letter’ to a policy expressed in its ‘spirit.’ They forget that sometimes policy is read into statutes and sometimes not. The canons of statutory construction do not, and cannot, resolve the conflicts."
This observation illustrates the place in the law for ethical considerations. There are many other examples of the intersection of ethics and the law, many of which are covered in Anderson’s leading text.

Changes and Additions in Latest Editions

In the latest edition of Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment, we see some notable updates and revisions that reflect the ever-evolving nature of the legal landscape. One of the most significant changes from prior editions is the more extensive coverage of digital and cyber law. As technology continues to play a larger role in business, it is crucial that students learn about the legal standards governing online commerce, digital contracts, and data protection. For example, the latest edition features expanded discussions on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, internet service provider liability for user-generated content, personal privacy laws, and the general data protection regulation. The current edition also reflects recent developments in contract law, including the adoption of the Restatement of the Law Third, Agency, Partnerships, and Unincorporated Associations. These revisions help students understand how the law surrounding agency and partnership formation, duties, and liability has developed and been applied in recent cases. There have also been significant updates to the chapters covering sales and products liability law. For example, the discussion of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has been expanded to include important changes to the law governing the sale of goods, including revisions to warranty law. In addition to the updates to the substantive law covered in the textbook, the latest edition has also revised the way that the material is presented. The organization and flow of the chapters have been redesigned to help students better understand the interrelated concepts of business law. The book also includes more real-world case studies and practical applications of the law, helping students connect the material to their own experiences. Overall, the latest edition of Anderson’s Business Law and the Legal Environment offers an in-depth look at the legal environment in a clear, engaging and student-friendly way.

Conclusion: The Significance of Anderson’s Business Law

The impact of Anderson’s Business Law on shaping individuals’ understanding of the formation and operations of commercial law, and give insight into why his work has remained popular across many different legal disciplines. Each subsequent edition has vetted the relevant portions of the law , and provided students and businesspeople with access to the initial writing in its context. The Anderson text pushed along the science of legal education as it stands today, and offers a window into what ultimately came to be one of the more important movements in modern legal education.