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Focusing on today’s complex business setting, The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business, Fourth Edition, by Ferrera, Alexander, Kirschner, Wiggins, and Darrow offers a comprehensive survey of topics affecting the legal environment of business today. By providing students with a thorough understanding of the legal and ethical issues they will face in their careers, this text is designed to prepare students to work within modern industry norms, practices, and legal and regulatory frameworks. Ethics coverage is integrated and featured throughout, ensuring the reader is well-informed and knowledgeable about both the legal and ethical aspects of business. In addition, ethical theory is interwoven with practical applications using novel pedagogical tools, such as simulated manager's meetings, to promote thoughtful inquiry and highlight the interplay between ethics and law.

Covering classical ethicists and philosophers as well as non-traditional voices, such as sub-Saharan African Ubuntu philosophy, this text extends and broadens students’ thinking about ethical frameworks. Chapters include questions and sidebar features that address how diversity, equity, and inclusion issues relate to the topic at hand.

The book's international focus ensures students are well-prepared for the global business environment. It covers critical topics in international business law such as key provisions of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods, updates to Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, and the new provision added to the UCC (Article 12).

New to the Fourth Edition: 

• Updated discussions on new technologies, including:
  • Treatment of AI-related legal and ethical issues (e.g., the copyrightability of AI-created graphical art and patentability of AI-developed inventions; the use of AI to create “deepfakes” use of AI as part of alleged price-fixing schemes)
  • Coverage of how AI is changing business practices and the extensive legal and ethical implications of these changes, such as changes to contract negotiations and drafting
• Incorporation of new US Supreme Court cases:
  • 303 Creative LLC (2023)
  • Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) (overturning Chevron)
  • Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States (2023)
  • Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (2023)
  • Sackett v. EPA (2023)

Professors and students will benefit from discussions of:

• The 2024 real estate fee splitting settlement of $418 million (Burnett et al v. Nat'l Ass'n of Realtors et al., Case No. 19-CV-00332-SRB (W.D. Mo. Aug. 8, 2024 (amended order))
• The 2021 creation of a new agency in New York State for the regulation of cannabis
• COVIID19-era calls to make the FDA more independent from the Executive Branch
• US blockage of new appointments to the WTO’s appellate body
• Enhanced antitrust enforcement against Amazon and other large technology companies
• Compliance and ethical aspects of off-shore manufacturing
• Updated caselaw example of questions involving apparent authority (Stein Eriksen Lodge Owners Ass'n Inc. v. MX Technologies Inc., 508 P .3d 138) and respondeat superior (Tammen v. Tronvold, 965 N.W.2d 161)
• The FTC rule regarding non-competes