LEB X80 LEB 180, 380 Topics in the Legal Environment of Business 1,3 Hours
1,3 Lecture Hours 0 Lab Hours
Selected topics on legal constraints affecting managerial decision making and business behavior. One or three lecture hours a week for one semester.
Pre/Corequisites: Graduate standing.
Grading: Student Option
Repeatable for credit: May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.
Academic Level: Doctoral
Topic 1: Social and Ethical Responsibility of Business. Ethical aspects of the managerial decision-making process; application of fundamental ethical principles to business, legal, and social problems. Topics include ethical implications of financial markets; race and gender discrimination; employee privacy; health, safety, environmental, and consumer issues; multinational business firms. Legal Environment of Business 380 (Topic 1) and 380 (Topic 17) may not both be counted.
Topic 2: Antitrust Law and Economics. Legal regulation of anticompetitive market structures and business practices, including political, economic, and historical factors. Monopolies, mergers, horizontal and vertical restraints of trade, and price discrimination.
Topic 3: Law of Commercial Real Estate Finance and Development. The legal framework of commercial real estate finance and development, including basic real estate law concepts, legal aspects of financing techniques and instruments, subdivision land-use controls, environmental regulation of real estate development, and other topics.
Topic 4: Legal and Ethical Environment of Finance. Covers all aspects of securities regulation, including the legal responsibilities and liabilities of investment bankers, stock analysts, hedge fund managers, auditors, and other securities industry professionals; corporate disclosure requirements; public offering rules; insider trading; mergers and acquisitions; shareholder rights; and relevant ethical and global implications.
Topic 5: The Law and the Multinational Corporation. Study of the legal environment in which the multinational enterprise operates, including negotiation and drafting of international contracts, international dispute resolution, expropriation, international investment regulation, letters of credit, tax havens, and cultural and ethical issues.
Topic 6: Intellectual Property and Antitrust. Relationships and tensions between laws designed to encourage competitive markets (antitrust laws) and those that grant limited monopolies (patents, copyrights, and trademarks).
Topic 7: Corporation Law. Legal framework for the formation and operation of partnerships and corporations, including limited liability partnerships and limited liability corporations; introduction to securities regulation concepts such as insider trading, mergers, and acquisitions.
Topic 8: Legal Environment of Business.
Topic 9: Law of the Entertainment Business. Legal aspects of management in the entertainment industry, including contractual and financing arrangements, licensing, and copyright.
Topic 10: Law of Wills, Trusts, and Estates. Planning and management of estates through the use of wills, trusts, and gifts; intestacy, guardianships, marital property systems, and prenuptial agreements.
Topic 11: Environmental Dispute Resolution. Theoretical and practical study of the prevention, management, and resolution of environmental disputes, such as those involving protection of endangered species, wetlands preservation, natural resource conservation, and liability for environmental damage and clean-up.
Topic 12: Legal Regulation of Unfair Competition. Competitive actions that violate state or federal law, such as intentional interference with the contractual relations of others, defamation in business contexts, and misappropriation of trade secrets. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 13: Commercial Transactions. A comprehensive study of the legal framework for business transactions, including bailments, sales of goods, commercial paper, lender liability, bank-customer relationships, secured transactions, creditor rights, and bankruptcy.
Topic 14: Intellectual Property. Legal aspects of protecting intellectual property, including patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights; the contractual licensing of these property rights and other legal aspects of technology.
Topic 15: Environmental Regulation of Business. Federal and state regulation of business activities that affect the environment; potential liability of business for environmental damage.
Topic 16: Legal Aspects of Marketing. State and federal laws on consumer protection, pricing (including price fixing and price discrimination), packaging, advertising, distribution, dealer control, and related topics. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 17: Legal and Ethical Environment of Accounting. State and federal regulations and tort and contract law principles that constrain accountants and create potential liability. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 18: Products Liability. Public policy, economics, and legal rules regarding liability for the manufacture or sale of defective products. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 19: Employment Law. State and federal laws on hiring, supervising, disciplining, and terminating employees: wrongful discharge law, discrimination law, workers' compensation and employee safety laws, and several related topics. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 20: Creating and Enforcing Contracts. Legal rules and practical policies on creating, monitoring, and enforcing contractual rights in a wide variety of business settings. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 21: Environmental Issues in Real Estate Transactions. Federal and state environmental regulations affecting commercial real estate transactions, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability ("Superfund") Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, wetlands regulation, and other related topics. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 22: Law of Corporate Finance and Governance. Legal rules and regulations applicable to a broad range of corporate financial issues, including agency theory, limited liability, valuation, bondholder rights, dividend policy, accountant and investment banker liability, and capital structure and leverage. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 23: Law of Corporate Mergers and Takeovers. Legal rules, policies, and economics of mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and related topics. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 24: Law of Real Estate Finance. Federal and state regulation of real estate finance. Topics include creation, transfer, and discharge of mortgagor's and mortgagee's interests; mortgage substitutes; foreclosures; priority of liens; bankruptcy; and government intervention in the private mortgage market. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 25: Bankruptcy Law and Debtor-Creditor Relations. The legal framework governing the rights and duties of companies, and their owners, creditors, and other stakeholders, in times of severe financial distress. Includes liquidation and reorganization proceedings in bankruptcy as well as alternatives to bankruptcy. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 26: Law for Entrepreneurs. Legal issues and principles affecting the business entrepreneur, including those related to formation of the appropriate type of business organization, capitalization, protection of personal assets from business liabilities, protection of innovative ideas, hiring key personnel, and related topics. Ethical and international dimensions are included where appropriate.
Topic 27: Cyberlaw. Highly focused coverage of intellectual property law (copyright, trade secret, patent, trademarks, and related topics) as it relates to computer hardware and software; substantial coverage of hardware and software licensing; Internet-related legal issues; antitrust issues in the computer industry; and other topics as time permits, such as encryption, privacy, and computer-system vendor liability.
Topic 28: Business Ethics in the Global Market. Moral theory and its application to business issues in diverse cultures.
Topic 29: Business and Public Policy. Study of the nonmarket environment and its considerable effects on business organizations. Review of business strategies for influencing legislatures, the executive branch, court decisions, and the media.
Topic 30: Legal Environment of Business for MPA Students. Introduction to the legal system, with particular emphasis on its applications to the accounting profession. Additional prerequisite: Admission to the Master in Professional Accounting program.
Topic 31: Energy Law. Introduction to the legal issues facing energy-generating and energy service companies in a deregulating, though not fully deregulated, world. Includes the (de)regulation of generation, wholesale transactions, and retail service, as well as the contractual and other legal issues governing the commercial market for energy.
Topic 32: E-Commerce: Law, Policy, and Strategy. The responsibilities of the strategist for choosing, developing, and managing an overall e-business firm strategy in uncertain legal, market, technology, and policy environments.
Topic 33: The Legal Life Cycle of a Technology Start-up. Comprehensive coverage of the legal issues faced by a technology start-up firm, including choice of an organizational form, employee compensation issues, negotiating real estate leases, protecting intellectual property, raising capital, and taking the firm public. Additional prerequisite: Admission to the Master of Business Administration program.
Topic 34: Business, Government, and Public Policy. Traces the relationship between business and government throughout the policy process and examines the constitutional constraints that affect businesses across different political and legal regimes. Includes discussion of the ethical issues that are intertwined with any discussion of business' role in the policy process. Additional prerequisite: Admission to the Master of Business Administration program.
Topic 35: Business, Government, and Public Policy: Washington Campus. This course examines the relationship between business and government throughout the policy process, from the policy formation stage (legislative and interest group politics) through the policy implementation stage (bureaucratic policy making, and rule enforcement by agencies and courts). The course is cross-disciplinary in that it examines business-government relations from the economic, political, legal, and behavioral perspectives. It focuses primarily on the US political/regulatory/legal system and addresses issues covered further in the Washington Campus event, a week-long seminar with policy makers in Washington DC that precedes the course. Restrictions: Restricted to students in the executive MBA program.
Topic 36: Law, Ethics, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Corporate responsibility issues and the tools necessary to manage relationships with external stakeholders such as governments, nongovernmental organizations, and communities in legal, political, and cultural contexts.
Topic 37: Financial Crisis and Restructuring. Studies the business and legal issues of corporate financial crises. Includes crisis simulation, moot court participation, and guest lectures by restructuring and insolvency professionals.
Topic 38: Energy Law: Regulating Energy Production. Examination of the federal, state, and local regulatory regimes governing the production of energy in the United States, including the licensing regimes for electric generation (renewable, nuclear, and fossil-fueled) and the regulation of fossil fuel extraction. Discussion of the statutory regimes regulating coal mining, oil and gas production, fossil-fueled electricity generation, nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, and utility-scale wind and solar farms. Covers related issues, including policies aimed at hastening the decarbonization of the electricity sector in an increasing number of states and municipalities, and policy conflicts associated with the growth of hydraulic fracturing to produce oil and gas. Legal Environment of Business 180, 380 (Topic 31) and 180, 380 (Topic 38) may not both be counted.
Topic 39: Energy Law: Regulating Energy Markets. Examination of the regulatory regimes governing the sale and delivery of energy in American energy markets, with focus on the economic regulation of electricity, natural gas, and oil markets. Discussion of how federal and state regulatory commissions regulate price and competition in interstate markets under the Federal Power Act and the Natural Gas Act, respectively, and in intrastate markets under analogous state laws. Covers related issues, including the effects of the rapid growth in renewable generation, the move toward increasing competition and market pricing, legal rules governing the siting of natural gas and electric transmission lines, the pricing of transmission services, rules governing the development of LNG terminals, and disputes over the pricing and regulation of distributed energy resources (such as rooftop solar or demand response). Legal Environment of Business 180, 380 (Topic 31) and 180, 380 (Topic 39) may not both be counted.