Research Paper on Three Branches of a Legal System: Judiciary at Its Core

Introduction

A legal system constitutes of three branches, that is the executive, legislation, and judiciary. The legislative branch serves the purpose of developing and setting rules to govern the people, for instance, determining rules for resolving conflicts. The judicial serves the function of adjudication, that is, comes up with a decision for resolving issues in case of a dispute. The judiciary serves as the core of the legal systems. The executive branch ensures that the decision made by the judiciary gets followed. Additionally, the executive branch ensures that law and order in the country for example in the case of business is adhered to. The executive can accomplish their purpose through intimidating force or voluntary social sanction or can apply both on various occasions.

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Legal systems develop laws that govern people. Laws are a set of rules developed by an authoritative body which has binding legal force. These set of rules are meant to be followed by the citizens or the subjects' failure to which legal consequence follows. Nonetheless, though these laws are meant to protect the citizens, many average citizens do not understand these laws wholly. Most of the citizens are only familiar with murder, physical harm, and thievery laws. The four principal purposes of law include establishing standards, maintaining order and peace amongst the people, resolving disputes and protecting the rights of the minorities (Capra, and Mattei, 2015). First, the law of establishing standards serves the purpose of giving guidelines to tolerable behavior in society. These laws are developed by members of the society, for instance, they can develop law against the injury of a person or destruction of properties. For example, in a state of law injury of another person without rationalization get considered as a crime of assault. Second, the law of maintaining order and peace serve the purpose of consistency within the society's guidelines (Whitley, 1994). For example, in West Virginia, they developed wildlife management laws that protected a certain game reserve from being hunted to extinction in the 19th century. These laws were developed to protect wildlife for the sake of future generations (Capra, and Mattei, 2015). Third, resolving dispute laws are necessary for a society with diverse people who have different wants, values, needs, and views. These laws provide the court as a system of resolving such disputes. Lastly, the law of protecting the liberties and the rights of the minorities from being taken advantage of by the majority group or the people in power such as politicians, governments, and organizations. For example, the constitution prohibits the government from making certain laws that affect free of speech amongst its citizen. Citizens are allowed to go to courts in case they feel their freedom of speech is prohibited.

Furthermore, laws in societies such as the United States become reflected in various other branches to serve the purpose of understanding of our everyday life. For example, common law becomes in existence following the occurrence of another similar case (Whitley, 1994). This means that in a court judges can use prior judgment they had made before on a case to conclude on another case in the future. Statutory law is laws develop by a legislative body of a particular nation. The difference between the statutory law and common law come in since common law is not written hence referred to as unwritten law. Whereas statutory law whether federal or state law gets written down and therefore its location can get accessed for future references. Moreover, equity law was developed in the English Court of Chancery. Equity gets overseen alongside common law.

Company law also is known as corporate or business law serves as a body of laws governing the relationships between the employer and the employees, protecting the rights of the employees, companies, and organizations (Porter, and Kramer, 2006). They further outline the code of conduct amongst the people working in various businesses. Contract law serves the purpose of regulation of exchange of goods and services or any other commodity of value. Tort law ensures compensation of damaged properties and injured person whether in accidents or defamation of characters. Property laws describe a person's rights and obligations towards tangible properties, for example, real estate and their various possessions including clothes and books, and intangible property, for instance, shares of stock and bank accounts (Capra, and Mattei, 2015). These laws lie under the civil laws which deal with solving of disputes between individuals. Criminal law deal with an offense against the community, state and the federal.

Potential Impact of the Law on a Business

The relationship between legislation, regulation, standard in business occur since the legislation forms laws, government agencies come up with regulations used to implement the laws, and lastly, development agencies construct and commend qualified standards. Standards provide procedures and necessities for particular products, services, and systems which make things work easier (Lenssen, Gasparski, Rok, Lacy, and Zadek, 2006). Consistence use of standards ensures safety, quality, and efficacy. Regulations are mandatory since they consist of detailed instructions concerning how laws get enforced. Sometimes regulations get denoted to as rules. Laws refer to a system of rules made by a legislative body of the government of a nation or city, which get approval by a ranking official such as the president.

Many businesses taking place internationally or locally get affected by the different government rules and regulation enacted both for the big and small businesses. The government can change these rules and regulations from time, therefore, any businesses entities should ensure they are always updated on the changes (Lenssen et al., 2006). The regulation enforced to the business by the government fall under four categories, employment law, competition policy, consumer protection, and competition policy.

Business legislations get imposed by courts, government, and trade unions. The employment law purposes at protecting the rights, safety, and health of the employees. Under the employment laws falls first, the health and safety at work law. This law states that the employer must provide safe premises and machinery for their employees to ensure their health does not get affected by their work. This health and safety legislation has its advantages and disadvantages to the business (Capra, and Mattei, 2015). The shortcomings occur when the business has to undertake the costs of training the staff and spending money for the maintenance of the premises and machines according to the standards spelled out. Nonetheless, this training helps in the long term reduction of costs since the reduction of staff absence and reduced cost of compensation fee for the injuries since they know how to operate the machinery. Additionally, good health and safety record attracts potential workers in the business.

Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrimination Act, and Race Relations Act consist of some of the laws imposed on businesses to ensure discrimination does not take place. Equal pay act ensures that all employees get equally paid for their value of work despite their gender. Sex discrimination act ensures that employees do not get sexually intimidated in their place of work. Race relations act states the illegality of discriminating someone on the basis of their color, ethnic group, and race (Porter, and Kramer, 2006). Finally, under the employment law falls the Employment Protection Act which states that employees must sign an employment contract which protects them against unfair dismissal from their jobs and gets a redundancy pay if they work for more than two years in a certain business or organization.

Consumer protection legislation in businesses ensures that consumers get fair treatment from businesses. This laws mostly protect consumers in low financial positions. Under the consumer protection legislation falls the Trade Description Act which states that goods and services provided should have the same advertised qualities. Sale and Supply of Goods Act state that goods and services possess satisfactory quality (Lenssen et al., 2006). Finally, the Consumer Credit Act protect the consumer when purchasing good on credit and when borrowing money. Consumer legislation generates extra costs to businesses and failure to adhere to them leads to fines and penalties. Continued ignorance of these consumer legislation leads to the court of law closing corporations and business organizations.

Competition laws in business warrant fair competition take place in various industries. High competition leads to better production of quality goods and services, a wider variety of goods and services, and lower prices for goods and services. Competition Commission (CC) and Office of Fair Trade (OFT) have the responsibility of ensuring that a business does not have a greater market share of above 25% since the business will control the market leading to increased prices and poor quality products (Siedel, 1999). In case two businesses want to merge to have power over the market, CC and OFT have the authority to prevent the merger from happening and fine the two businesses. OFT also has the power to the fine business that prevents other businesses to trade in their markets more so, those businesses that fix market prices.

Environmental laws in a business deal with pollution of air, surface waters, drinking waters, groundwater, and land. Pollution of the environment comes from manufacturing and producing companies (Siedel, 1999). Most of the people affected by this contamination include the workers of the company and the people from the communities where the business is located. With the increased participation of the global market by business people, contamination increase not only nationally but exceed international borders. The state government then get burdened by its citizens' expectations of getting compensation to those who suffer from contamination of the environment through toxic substances. The public also expects the legal system to provide clean up a mechanism to the contaminated environment, protection from exposure to toxic substances, and to prevent environment contamination (Siedel, 1999). In this case, the tort laws occur where workers and their families get compensated for the damages caused by the business.

Data Protection Act has the responsibility of controlling how personal data gets used by businesses, government, and organization (Schaltegger, Hansen, and Ludeke-Freund, 2016). There are no specific laws developed on the basis of data protection, however, several state and federal laws protect personal data. For instance, in the U.S. at the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission Act empowers the Federal Trade Commission to enforce laws that protect consumers against unfair deceiving practices and to implement privacy and data protection regulations. In a company, we have different workers. Some serve as the people in power in authority, such people include the directors. Breach of contract among the directors can lead to heavy penalties after a series of investigation and found guilty. The two major responsibilities of the directors include serving as the fiduciary and serving as the authoritative power in the company. A fiduciary is a person serving the expressive power over assets and money on behalf of others. In this case, directors in various businesses serve as a fiduciary (Schaltegger, Hansen, and Ludeke-Freund, 2016). Hence, the development of laws meant to protect on behalf of the fiduciaries act, through placing vari...