Law 421 Week 1 Assignment

The Role of Law in Business and Society

Andrew Goldman

LAW\421

The Commerce Clause

The commerce clause of the United States Constitution has many far-reaching implications on business law. The commerce clause gives the federal government the ability to regulate any business conducted between two or more states. In other words, whenever a good or service is sold across state lines, the federal government has jurisdiction to create and enforce regulations on this trade. The commerce clause has been an extensively debated in aspect of the US Constitution and has been the focus of many Supreme Court cases (Kaufman 2010). Some argue that the federal government has overused the commerce clause by implementing burdensome regulations, while others believe that these regulations are necessary for an organized system of interstate trade.

Furthermore, federal law will always reign supreme over state law if a conflict exists. The exact wording of the clause explains that US laws “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” For example, if the state of Arizona legalized automatic weapons that are banned by federal law, the state law would not be valid because of the supremacy clause. The conflicts arise on a regular basis and are often judged by the US Supreme Court.

Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc

The case of Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc demonstrates how the legal decisions can have a major influence on business decisions. The plaintiff was the husband of Rose Cipollone, a lifelong cigarette smoker who died of lung cancer. He claimed that the tobacco company Liggett Group was responsible for her death due to several state common laws. The primary issue for the court was to decide if federal statutes preempted the plaintiff’s claims based on state common law. In 1969, the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act became law, which required tobacco companies to put health risk warnings on their packages, which served as the basis for the preemption claim by the defendant....