The Importance of Business Law - Research Paper Example

The following analysis will seek to utilize a systemic approach to business law while at the same time briefly discussing the history of how it came to be and the ways in which it pervades the current economic system. 

The earliest business law dates back to the times of the first civilized societies that sought to place restraints on the manner in which goods could be traded within their societies.  As the complexity of trade and commerce grew, so too did the constraints of oversight with relation to business.  The British Empire enacted some of the highest levels of business law that had been seen previous to its existence. However, the greatest explosion of business law took place within the post-industrial period.  As a result of the mechanization of production and the rapidly increased rates in which consumer products were integrated within the market, a whole new level of legal constraints was necessitated (Hasnas, 2007).  Due to the unethical behavior in which many actors sought to integrate these goods within the markets, it was determined, just as it is within the current time, that the best means to protect the end consumer and guarantee that a further level of respect for these bounds might be entertained.

However, before extolling the virtues of these constraints to a greater degree than is deserved, it should be understood and appreciated by the reader that these constraints cannot and should not be seen as the be-all and end-all of legal protection from the excess and greed that the business environment might seek to engage.  Recent events such as the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff, the corruption of Enron, and the ways in which Lehman Brothers and a litany of other financial institution sought to cook the books with regards to the total level so debt they carried and the resiliency of their institutions should underscore the fact that oftentimes extant legal constraints upon business are not sufficient in order to curtail the greed and unethical nature that they necessarily exhibit.  As a function of this, law and its growth and development and integration within the business environment is something that must continue to grow and evolve as the business environment itself also grows and evolves (Blodgett, 2011).  Moreover, the reader should not understand business law to be the remediation of all unethical and immoral behavior due to the fact that law always acts as a deterrent and lags behind the common practices that necessitate its legislation in the first place. 

Finally, although business law is extraordinarily important within the current environment, it cannot be stressed enough that its importance lies not with regards to the level of penalties that exist for disregard for these laws but with relation to the extent to which the deterrence that they reflect can seek to diminish the behavior that they seek to punish.  This level of importance helps to underscore the fact that law and its implementation with regard to the business field exist as a means to integrate a better level of consumer representation and protection than would otherwise exist.  However, the protection of consumer interests is not the only reason in which business law exists.  For instance, one of the largest segments of applied business law is with relation to the means by which a firm integrates with the profit it incurs.  In this way, such a level of business law is specifically interested in financial reporting and taxation.  Although these can be understood to have a trickle-down effect on the ultimate consumer, they are nonetheless specifically interested in keeping the income of the federal government unaffected by the otherwise unethical practices that a firm may seek to employ with regards to hiding its overall profitability.