Principal (commercial law)

About: Principal (commercial law) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1579 publications have been published within this topic receiving 35379 citations. The topic is also known as: Principal (commercial law).

Incompetent, prejudiced and lawless? A Gestalt‐psychological perspective on fact finding in law as learning

Abstract: 1. Biased about ‘bias’? At least for a given unproblematic understanding of bias, lawyers from different legal cultures, and indeed lawyers and scientists, will easily agree that ‘biased’ inferences are detrimental to the truth. The judge who convicts despite his better knowledge because he has something to gain from the conviction displays the same kind of undesirable behaviour as the scientist who falsifies test results because his sponsors pay him to do so. In both cases, we condemn their behaviour in part because it is detrimental to the truth. Both the legal traditions discussed in this paper, common law and European continental law, have explicit rules prohibiting this sort of behaviour. 1 However, this consensus disappears once the question becomes one of which institutional set-ups are most apt to prevent more subtle and subconscious forms of prejudice and bias. Continental legal systems for instance view the transmission of written information to the judge prior to the principal proceedings as an important means of ensuring judicial impartiality. Away from the parties and free from the temptation to be swayed by their personal charm, a distanced, neutral and objective assessment of the situation becomes possible. Physical distance results in cognitive

Still, at the Margins

Abstract: Still, at the Margins Austin Sarat, ed., The Social Organization of Law: Introductory Readings. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Co., 2004. 596 pp. $65.95 paper. In one of many traditions of critical race scholarship, this review opens with a first-person narrative. When I was asked to review Austin Sarat's new compilation of introductory readings on law and society at the "Change" breakfast of the 2004 annual Law and Society Association meeting in Chicago, I responded affirmatively but with rather tepid enthusiasm, which reflected-as I recall-the level of enthusiasm I felt for the conference overall, despite (or perhaps because of) it being my third year in attendance at the notoriously large and panel-packed meeting. When I was asked further to review the compilation specifically from a "critical race perspective," my lack of enthusiasm quickly transformed to discomfort, and I wanted to immediately revoke my acceptance of the offer to do the review. Even those who do not identify as "race crits" or "fern race crits"-as I do-are likely aware that law and society is known in certain academic circles for being overwhelmingly liberal (and, therefore, not critical) and overwhelmingly white. Moreover, although certainly many race crits do consider themselves part of this large, scholarly community and while I always enjoyed participating in and attending various panels, up to that point I had never sought to make law and society my intellectual "home." As a result, in being asked to review Sarat's new book, I felt both flattered and doomed-flattered because I was being called upon for my "expertise" as a race crit who could write intelligently about the book, and doomed because I was an outsider being invited in, however briefly, to criticize a principal player-an insider's insider-in the law and society movement. It was a classic micro-dilemma of "subject unrest" (Gulp et al. 2003:2435)-I wanted in and wanted out at the same time, for all the right and wrong reasons. In the moments when I contemplated changing my mind, my tendency toward melodrama gave way to my inability to say no and, more seriously, to my feeling that someone should write a critical race review of the book. But my feelings of ambivalence toward this review, even as I write it, have not diminished, and I am all too aware of my positionality as an outsider to the law and society community. This disclosure of outsider positionality is an important one because it frames the substantive critique of this review. Mission and Audience The Social Organization of Law is aimed at students, both at undergraduate students who are interested in becoming lawyers or in the legal system more generally, and at law students interested in the interconnectedness of law and society. In his introduction, Sarat sets forth the text's basic premise, that "law seeks to work in the world" (p. 1), and he describes the two ways in which the collection aims to explain how law does so: First, the readings in this book highlight law's responsiveness to various dimensions of social stratification. They draw attention to the question of when, why, and how legal decisions respond to social characteristics (e.g., race, class, gender) of those making the decisions as well as those who are subject to them and when, why, and how they should do so. ... Second, the book treats law itself as a social organization, emphasizing the complex relations among its various component parts (e.g., judges and jurors, police and prosecutors, appellate and trial courts). . . . (p. 1). Sarat thematically organizes his anthology around the law's paradoxes. That is, the law works to be "impartial and evenhanded" but also "sympathetic and responsive"; accessible and efficient but not overly so; deterrent of socially unacceptable behaviors but also equitable toward the perpetrators of such conduct; and, most significantly, controlling of violence and also of the sort of discretion thought necessary to control that violence (p. …

The Doctrine of Apparent Authority as a Precondition for Sustainable Business

Abstract: In the light of modern commercial relationships, the doctrine of apparent authority plays an important role in ensuring the sustainability of business. Where the business undertaking is a large and complex one, it would be difficult and inconvenient for a person or legal entity to communicate every transaction with the agent. Thus, an agent’s effective powers in dealing with third parties may extend to transactions that he was not authorized to undertake by the principal. Such situations are usually characterized as apparent authority. The difficulty with this type of authority lies in the lack of control on the part of the principal which entails certain questions of liability of either the agent or the principal. Even though the third party has to check the agent’s authority, he cannot know about all the details of the agent’s internal authorization. Therefore, there is always a risk that the agent was not authorized to act. This article is deemed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the doctrine of apparent authority from a comparative perspective. A conclusion is made that the doctrine is an efficient mean of apportioning the risk of liability for agent’s unauthorized act between the principal and the third party with individual factors determining who must bear liability it in every specific case.

Ekonomická analýza práva: případ kontraktu a jednatelství

Abstract: Author deals with essentials regarding economic analysis of law. The methodology of Law and Economics approach is in general summarized and the distinction between rational and behavioral concepts are mentioned. Additionally, the economics of contracts including subsumed contractual formation, obligation performance and potential dispute incidence, and agency by means of its economic advantages in sense of model applicable for a variety of particular legal relations are concerned.

Might Alone Does Not Make Right: Justifying Secondary Liability

Abstract: The current test for secondary liability usually turns on foresight of a risk that the principal might commit the crime, but this is misguided. If some form of foresight must be used, which is both doubtful and if true, regrettable, the current formulation of it is unacceptable. It is commonly said now that S is liable for the same offence as P, where S foresees a “real risk” or “substantial possibility” that P will commit that offence. This is a poor cousin to recklessness, the hard-won common law test for wrongful risk-taking. In particular, reference to quantifying the risk cannot take the place of the other established element of recklessness: recklessness only criminalises foreseeing a risk and unjustifiably taking it, rather than merely the taking of any appreciated risk, however small. A return to established principle might help to level off from the last twenty years’ downward spiral of the level of culpability required for secondary liability and prevent further problems in the law. At the very least, the law should recognise the situations where the validity or utility of the conduct by the secondary party makes the risk that it contributes to a crime taking place insufficient to justify criminal liability.