Global Corporate Citizenship Notes Exam 1 CH 1 Statutes statutes are laws created by elected representatives in Congress or a state legislature common law also called judge made law or case law law made and applied by judges as they decide cases not governed by statutes or other types of law Although common law exists only at the state level both state courts and federal courts become involved in applying it Uniform acts model statutes drafted by private bodies of lawyers and or scholars They do not become law until a legislature enacts them Their aim is to produce state by state uniformity on the subjects they address Over time judges began to follow the decisions of other judges in similar cases called precedents This practice became formalized in the doctrine of stare decisis let the decision stand As you will see later in the chapter stare decisis is not completely rigid in its requirement of adherence to prece dent It is flexible enough to allow the common law to evolve to meet changing social conditions Text torts This text s torts contracts and agency chapters often refer to the Restatement or Restatement Second or Third rule on a particular subject The Restatements are collections of common law and occasionally statutory rules covering various areas of the law Because they are promulgated by the American Law Institute rather than by courts the Restatements are not law and do not bind courts However state courts often find Restatement rules persuasive and adopt them as common law rules within their states The Restatement rules usually are the rules followed by a majority of the states Occaionally however the Restatements stimulate changes in the common law by suggesting new rules that the courts later decide to follow The body of law called equity historically concerned itself with accomplishing rough justice when common law rules would produce unfair results Equity courts also provided several remedies not available in the common law courts which generally awarded only money damages or the recovery of property The most important of these equitable remedies was and continues to be the injunction a court order forbidding a party to do some act or commanding him to perform some act Others include the contract remedies of specific performance whereby a party is ordered to perform according to the terms of her contract reformation in which the court rewrites the contract s terms to reflect the parties real inten tions and rescission a cancellation of a contract in which the parties are returned to their precontractual position Functions of Law 1 Peacekeeping The criminal law rules discussed in Chapter 4 further this basic function of any legal system Also as Chapter 3 suggests the resolution of private disputes serves as a major function of the civil law 2 Checking government power and promoting personal freedom Obvious examples are the constitutional restrictions 3 Facilitating planning and the realization of reason able expectations The rules of contract law discussed in Chapter 6 help fulfill this function of law 4 Promoting economic growth through free competition The antitrust laws are among the many legal rules that help perform this function 5 Promoting social justice Throughout this century government has intervened in private social and eco nomic affairs to correct perceived injustices and give all citizens equal access to life s basic goods Exam ples include the employer employee regulations 6 Protecting the environment Legal Reasoning Case based reasoning CBR broadly construed is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems precedents stare decisis Interpereting Statutes Plain Meaning Rule This approach calls for the court to apply the statute according to the usual meaning of its words without concerning itself with anything else General Dynamics Inc vs Cline Facts of the Case General Dynamics Land Systems renegotiated its union contract to provide full health care benefits only to retirees who were more than 50 years old by a July 1 1997 deadline Union member Dennis Cline fell two years short of 50 at the time of the deadline and was excluded permanently from receiving health benefits Cline along with 196 other 40 to 49 year old employees filed suit against General Dynamics under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ADEA ADEA protects workers over 40 from age discrimination Since the contract excluded workers between the ages of 40 and 49 Cline alleged that providing benefits only to retirees 50 and up was illegal age discrimination A U S district court in Ohio rejected Cline s claims The court ruled that the ADEA does not recognize claims for reverse discrimination or preferential treatment for older people within the same over 40 class Cline appealed and the U S Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed The court ruled that General Dynamics was guilty of plain age discrimination since the ADEA protects all persons over 40 from age discrimination by their employers Read the Briefs for this Case Question Does the Age Discrimination in Employment Act 1967 prohibit reverse discrimination against workers over 40 e g providing more favorable employer benefits to workers over 50 than to younger workers who are still over 40 Argument General Dynamics Land Systems Inc v Cline Oral Argument General Dynamics Land Systems Inc v Cline Opinion Announcement Conclusion Decision 6 votes for General Dynamics Land Systems Inc 3 vote s against Legal provision Age Discrimination in Employment ADEA No Justice David H Souter delivered the Court s 6 3 opinion that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act s text structure purpose history and relationship to other federal statutes show that the statute does not mean to stop an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one The Court cited a long held understanding of the ADEA as a remedy for unfair preference based on relative youth leaving complaints of the relatively young outside the statutory concern The Court also noted the findings section of the act included no evidence of younger workers being discriminated against in favor of older workers Further i f Congress had been worrying about protection the younger against the older it would not likely have ignored everyone under 40 Legislative History Courts sometimes refuse to follow a statute s plain meaning when its legislative history suggests a different result Almost all courts resort to legislative history