Assignment

Review the Constitution in Appendix A and choose one of the following sections of the U.S. Constitution or a specified amendment to use as the basis for your initial response:

• Any of Congress's enumerated powers under Article I, Section 8
• 1st Amendment
• 4th Amendment
• 5th Amendment
• 14th Amendment

Identify the section of the Constitution or its amendment that you have chosen. Discuss how this section of the Constitution or its amendments both limit and protect business in general. Describe an example of how the section of the Constitution or its amendment that you have chosen could be applied to your professional life (past, present, or future). In your example, discuss whether the section of the Constitution you have chosen to address limits business or protects it.

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your fellow students' posts in a substantive manner. Some ways to do this include the following, though you may choose a different approach, providing your response is substantive:

Review the initial posts made by your peers, and note whether the responses relied upon a different section of the Constitution or amendment than your response.

If your peer chose to focus on a different section of the Constitution or amendment than you did, discuss how that section of the Constitution relates to any example of a business situation from your professional life (past, present, or future).

If your peer chose to focus on the same section of the Constitution or amendment that you did, then compare and contrast the different applications of that section of the amendment to your respective examples from your own professional lives.

Suggest analytical differences that could lead to different outcomes. Point out ways in which the Constitution or its amendments might limit or protect business that your peer did not already identify.

REPLY TO EDWARD:

Under the enumerated powers under Article 1, Section 8, creating post offices and roads was put in place many years ago to allow individuals to communicate with each other because they had no telephones or radios. Not to mention that they were hardly any post offices in the late 1700's and they were far away from each other, which is why congress established roads and more post offices on where mail was to be delivered. The postal clause protects businesses by way of not having confidential information shared with outsiders, which means the information that is used to send and receive documents can't be shared or sold to other businesses. However, when it comes to delivering packages, congress gave post offices power to charge them for delivering and a company cannot contest the price.

The postal power protects me by way of not having to worry about mail carriers or workers opening my mail before I receive it because it is an invasion of privacy. "Law comprises rules of behavior that a government imposes on its people for the benefit of society as a whole. As such, it represents the governing body's subjective views of what is best for that society" (Seaquist, 2012, p. 1.1). Anybody who steals mail or opens it will face a fine, criminal conviction and even go to jail. It also gives me the right to deliver and send documents almost anywhere in the world where postal grounds are established, which grants businesses the power to expand their profits; especially if they are in a foreign land or another part of the country.

References

Seaquist, G. (2012). Business law for managers.