Preface

Our goal is to provide students with a legal environment textbook, with cases; one that is engaging, up to date, appropriately comprehensive in its coverage of legal and regulatory issues, and organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach.

Here we give you cases, in the courts’ own words, edited for brevity. The cases illustrate legal issues and principles, judicial reasoning and vocabulary, all of which provide a richer student experience than “thumbnail” descriptions of what issues the judges were faced with, and how they reasoned. We remain convinced that students should be exposed to the actual language of the courts. In addition, monetary denominations are regularly noted, both as stated in the cases and in current U.S. dollars (for example, a contract made in 1960 for $500 doesn’t seem worth much litigation until you realize that would be about $4,300 in current dollars).

The book is up to date: while we retain some favorite older cases, classics like Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, we have included new ones that satisfy our criteria for currency and importance. And too, the cases must be engaging and accessible. Non-case law is not static, either: we address salient statutory and regulatory law and—throughout the book—the social forces that affect lawmaking.

Students are likely to become more engaged if they recognize that law relates to everyday events with which they are already familiar (or with which they are becoming familiar in other business courses), if they understand some of the social and historical context for the law, and if the text is presented clearly, concisely, and with a readable style. (An earlier business law text by authors Lieberman and Siedel was hailed as “the best written text in a very crowded field.”) We think this text does that.

The book is appropriately comprehensive. It provides context and essential concepts that graduates from American colleges and universities should know, and it satisfies AACSB standards.

If you conscientiously teach an academic subject for many years (over one hundred years of combined teaching and textbook writing inform this text), you come to understand how to present complex, interrelated material smoothly with an eye toward the students’ pedagogic success. We do want them to learn this stuff!

As to pedagogy, we think that good organization of the extensive subject matter in the legal environment of business is key. For clarity and student understanding, this new text is rigorously organized in three main sections:

(1) An Introduction to Law section, which—as the chapter titles suggest—introduces students to main concepts of the legal environment of business.

(2) A Black-Letter Law section takes up the business law fundamentals of tort, contract, property, agency, and business organization.

(3) A Government Regulation section, dealing with various aspects of government regulation of business, including (something we think is unique here) regulation for a social safety net.

And, reflecting further concern for clear organization, the basic organizing structure of government is shown to play out over and over throughout the text. Law is always and everywhere made, and constrained, by five main entities: legislative, executive, judicial, administrative agencies, and—sometimes—direct democracy. All governments have some division of authority like this, though the division may not be explicit, and the power allowed to each authority differs. We find that the reiteration of these five law-making entities across a range of issues is very useful pedagogically. Similarly, in discussion of contract, as such, or in the context of agency, business organization, employment, consumer law (among others) this pattern plays out: any contractual relationship is entered expressly, impliedly, or apparently.

Writing a textbook is no short-term project. We authors are sincerely pleased to present to students and to our colleagues this excellent text.