Civil law - law concerned with the rules that govern the relations between businesses and/or people, for example employment and consumer rights.

Criminal Law - this law defines the actions that the state has decided are ‘wrong’ and the punishment that will result from these actions.

There are also 2 types of EU law:

• Regulations which have to be adopted and applied in a certain way
• Directives must also be applied as law, but the individual countries decide on how to implement it.

Laws aim to make businesses and individuals behave in a responsible way

Without them a business could:

• Dismiss employees at a moments notice for any reason with no explanation
• Provide dangerous and unhealthy working conditions
• Change the amount of money it has agreed to pay to a supplier
• Pollute and destroy the environment

An employee could:

• Turn up for work whenever they liked disregarding agreed hours
• Steal from the business
• Ignore instructions from managers

A contract - this is a legally binding agreement between two or more parties. Most business relationships are of a contractual nature and are regulated by contract law.

Competition Law - it is illegal for a business to restrict competition in any way.

A Business could do this through:

• Businesses aiming to restrict supply
• Businesses conspiring together to keep up prices (cartel)
• A business charging an artificially lower price in order to bankrupt competition
• A business forcing distributors to stock all of its products under the threat tif they dont they will not be supplied anything.