Foundations of Business Law

- legal custom: developed over a longer period of time

- Written law: qualified law, legal acts/ordinances

- Judical opinion: court decisions, opinions of scholars, lawyers, judges

Relationship between private persons

• Family law
• Law of succession
• Law of property
• Law of contracts
• Commercial law
• Law of cooperation
• Tort Law
• Trust Law

Acts and behaviour of the state

• Constitutional law (rules over the organization of the state including fundamental rights)
• Criminal Law (prohibiting, punishing, prosecuting certain offensive behaviour)
• International Law (relation between states themselves

Constitutional Law:

• How the government works in election
• In parliamentary procedure
• And the division of power between different arms of government
• Human right values
• Democratic core principles

International Law:

• Relation between nation states

Criminal Law:

• Guilty mind -> guilty act
• Guilty act = offense
• Guilty act can be committed if you are insane or under drugs
  • Punishments: imprisonment, fines, community service

- Civil law (CH+most of Europe):

• Made by the parliament and the government
• Judges merely interpret the laws in the individual cases

- Common law (USA+UK)

• Stare decisis or precedent were the major innovation
• Judged make the law – what is just and fair
• Judges must decide their cases similar on how other courts have done it
  • Analyse old cases
• Precedent = statement by the judge in deciding a case

• to attain a deeper knowledge of the legal systems
• to perfect the legal systems
• possibly, to contribute to a unification of legal systems, of a smaller or larger scale (cf. for instance, the United Nations treaty on the international sale of goods)

• Independent courts
• Representative parliament
• The military
• Police
• The bureaucratic organisation
• Civil society itself

• If someone has the total power, this person will abuse the power
• Because of that they advocated the separation of power (Gewaltentrennung)