role of law

The Role of Law
Esther Sellers

The role of law in business is at the heart of everything we do as a United States. The forming of the United States and our Constitution is at the heart of all of our legal decisions. We hold the constitution up to the scrutiny of every case that is presented to the courts. Our laws are created by our executive branches and legislative branches and upheld by our courts. When a federal law is created there are many processes that it goes through to be created. The state laws that are created serve the common law. When a federal law and state law conflicts, the federal law is supreme. “Federal legislation or regulation must be authorized by a specific, enumerated power in the Constitution.”(The legal environment of business, Sean P. Melvin, McGraw-Hill, Pg.29) The law that we adhere to in present day is made up of a combination of constitutional law, statutory law, common law, and administrative law (regulations). All of these work together as a compass to guide us through. Constitutional law is supreme to all other law. It establishes the boundaries, structure and procedures to follow. In many cases concerning our well being as a whole, the constitution creates the foundation for guidance. It is referred to as the cornerstone of our country. When a case is brought to the courts, it is subject to the strict scrutiny of the constitutional laws that formed our country. There are many roles that our legal system plays in our everyday lives, one in particular is our freedom of speech and our rights. The constitution was written and amended to provide us with a set of rights to adhere to. When our rights become violated, we have legal recourse based on the constitution. There must be order among chaos and the constitution provides this order. The order that we live by is there to assist us in creating the laws. If a case such as the one used as an example where the question was raised about the advertising of a company creating loss of life because of the product being advertised, the ruling was made clear that the business was free and clear of any responsibility due to the choice of use of the product. The company could not be held responsible for the loss of life due to the consumption of their product because it was the choice of the consumer. The advertising did not make them ingest their product and therefore they were not responsible for the loss of life. In many cases like this, the constitution is clear to protect the business because of their freedom of speech and constitutional rights to conduct business. Our laws are set up to protect our rights. The heart of our country is based on these rights. Law creates the backbone of our structure as a country. When we were in the infancy of our country, our forefathers created a structure for us to adhere to even now, hundreds of years later. In conclusion, the role of law in our everyday lives is apparent and much needed to keep the chaos at bay. If we did not have the structure of our legislative, executive and judicial system to create our laws to live by, we would have chaos. Natural law used to be the law of the land until there was the realization that we all have different ideas about supreme being that created us. The different religions disproved natural law. Our founding fathers broke away from the dictatorship of England to form a more fair minded organization and created our country that we live in today. Businesses adhere to our constitutional laws, procedural laws and common laws but supremely adhere to our constitution. This is the structure that we live with and abide by the laws that are created by our given structure that we elect each election.