Alternative Title: Sources of Law (Module 2)

For the benefit of my fall business law students, I am including here a complete set of general overviews of the contents of Module 2 of our legal and ethical environment of business course (BUL3130). In summary, Module 2 is devoted to the big picture–the main sources of law in the USA–and one way of visualizing this messy and massive picture is the legal historian F. W. Maitland’s metaphor of “law as a seamless web.” (For your reference, a portrait of the great Maitland is pictured below. The artist is Susan Beatrice Lock. You can learn more about her life and work here.) I therefore use Maitland’s beautiful metaphor as a unifying theme throughout Module 2. Enjoy!

1. Preview of Module 2
2. The seamless web: State and local law
3. The expanding web: federal law
4. The outer edges of the web: international law
5. Law’s little spiders