The Legal Environment of Business: A Critical Thinking Approach

Taking a dynamic, and very contemporary approach to legal environment of business studies, this text covers introductory topics, private law, and public law, but offers an alternative to the traditional method of case analysis. It emphasizes the importance of incorporating a questioning dimension into legal reasoning, one which involves critical thinking and the consideration of the impact of values (ethics) on the outcome being considered. The text outlines an authoritative step-by-step model for critical thinking/ethical analysis, and gives students hands-on opportunities to develop these skills.

Nancy Kubasek is a Professor of Legal Studies at Bowling Green State versify, where she teaches the Legal Environment of Business, Environmental Law, and an Honors Seminar on Moral Principles. For eight years she team-taught a freshman honors seminar on critical thinking and values analysis. She has published an undergraduate textbook titled Environmental Law, Fourth Edition (Prentice Hall, 2002) and more than 50 articles. Her articles have geared in such journals as the American Business Law Journal, the Journal of Legal Studies Education, the Harvard Women's Law Journal, the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, and the Harvard Journal on Legislation. She received her J.D. from the University of Toledo College of Law and her B.A. from Bowling Green State University.

Active in her professional associations, she has served as President of the TriState Regional Academy of Legal Studies in Business, and is currently the Vice-President of her national professional association, The Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB). Committed to helping students become excited about legal research, she organized the first Undergraduate Student Paper Competition of the ALSB's Annual Meeting, an event that now provides an annual opportunity for students to present their original legal research at a national convention. She has also published several articles with students, and has received her university's highest award for faculty-student research.

"The most important thing that a teacher can do is to help his or her students develop the skills and attitudes necessary to become lifelong learners. Professors should help their students learn the types of questions to ask to analyze complex legal issues, and to develop a set of criteria to apply when evaluating reasons. If we are successful, students will leave our legal environment of business classroom with a basic understanding of important legal concepts, a set of evaluative criteria to apply when evaluating arguments that includes an ethical component, and a desire to continue learning.

To attain these goals, the classroom must be an interactive one, where students learn to ask important questions, define contexts, generate sound reasons, point out the flaws in erroneous reasoning, recognize alternative perspectives, and consider the impacts that their decisions (both now and in the future) have on the broader community beyond themselves."

Bartley A. Brennan is an Emeritus Professor of Legal Studies at Bowling Green State University. He is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (B.S. International Economics); the College of Law, State University of New York at Buffalo (J.D.); and Memphis State University (M.A. Economics). He was a volunteer in the United States Peace Corps, was employed by the Office of Opinions and Review of the Federal Communications Commission, and worked in the general counsel's office of a private international corporation. He has received appointments as a visiting associate professor, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and as a Research Fellow, Ethics Resource Center, Washington, D.C. He is the author of articles dealing with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as Amended; the business judgment rule; law and economics; and business ethics. He has published numerous articles in such journals as the American Business Law Journal, University of North Carolina Journal of International Law, and the Notre Dame University Journal of Legislation. He is a coauthor of Modem Business Law (third edition). He has testified on amending the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act before the SubCommittee on International Economics and Finance of the House Commerce, Energy, and Telecommunications Committee.

M. Neil Browne is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Economics and Director of IMPACT, an Honors Residential Learning Community Centered Around the Principles of Intellectual Discovery and Moral Commitment, at Bowling Green State University. He received a J.D. from the University of Toledo and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas. He is the co-author of seven books and more than one hundred research articles in professional journals. One of his books, Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Sixth Edition, is a leading text in the field of critical thinking. His most recent book, Striving for Excellence in College: Tips for Active Learning, provides learners with practical ideas for expanding the power and effectiveness of their thinking. Professor Browne has been asked by dozens of colleges and universities to aid their faculty in developing critical thinking skills on their respective campuses. He also serves on the editorial board of the Korean Journal of Critical Thinking. In 1989, he was a silver medalist in the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education's National Professor of the Year award. Also in 1989, he was named the Ohio Professor of the Year. He has won numerous teaching awards on both a local and national level.

"When students come into contact with conflicting claims, they can react in several fashions; my task is to enable them to evaluate these persuasive attempts. I try to provide them with a broad range of criteria and attitudes that reasonable people tend to use as they think their way through a conversation. In addition, I urge them to use productive questions as a stimulus to deep discussion, a looking below the surface of an argument for the assumptions underlying the visible component of the reasoning. The eventual objectives are to enable them to be highly selective in their choice of beliefs and to provide them with the greater sense of meaning that stems from knowing that they have used their own minds to separate sense from relative nonsense."