Stuff

1) Analyse the legal compliance strategy of your company or one with which you are familiar. What are the strengths? Can you think of any way it might be improved?

Legal compliance is the process or procedure to ensure that an organization follows relevant laws, regulations and business rules. The definition of legal compliance, especially in the context of corporate legal departments, has recently been expanded to include understanding and adhering to ethical codes within entire professions, as well.

In the legal system, compliance usually refers to behaviour in accordance with legislation. Compliance in a regulatory context is a prevalent business concern, perhaps because of an ever-increasing number of regulations and a fairly widespread lack of understanding about what is required for a company to be in compliance with new legislation. In the financial sector, SOX (USA Sarbanes-Oxley Act) was enacted in response to the high-profile Enron and WorldCom financial scandals to protect shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise.

3) How and to what extent does the Australian Constitution determine the parameters of the legal environment in which business must operate?

The Australian Constitution established a federal system of government, under which powers are distributed between the federal government and the states. It defined exclusive powers (investing the federal government with the exclusive power to make laws on matters such as trade and commerce, taxation, defence, external affairs, and immigration and citizenship) and concurrent powers (where both tiers of government are able to enact laws).

5) What is meant by the doctrine of precedent? What are the advantages and disadvantages of employing such a doctrine?

Doctrine of Precedent

* Un-enacted law refers to the law made not by parliament but by courts when they decide cases. These decisions become binding on later courts...