Business Law Text Notes Essay

Nature of Crimes Crimes are public wrongs- acts prohibited by the state or federal government. Typically classified as a felony or a misdemeanor: Felony- A serious crimes such as murder, sexual assault and involve significant moral culpability on the offender’s part. These are punishable by lengthy prison sentences, fines, loss of voting rights, revoking of professional licenses. Misdemeanor- A lesser offense such as disorderly conduct or battery resulting in minor physical harm to the victim. These usually involve much less moral culpability by the offender than those of felony offenses. Punishable by lesser fines and confinement in prison. Purpose of the Criminal Sanction Under the utilitarian view people believe that prevention of socially undesirable behavior is the only purpose of criminal penalties. This goal of prevention includes three major components: deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. Deterrence- Under this theory threat or imposition of punishment deters crimes in two ways: 1. Special Deterrence- when punishment of an offender deters him from committing further crimes 2. General Deterrence- when punishment of a wrongdoer deters other from committing similar offenses Factors influencing the effectiveness of deterrence are: 1. Likelyhood crime will be detected 2. That detection will be followed by prosecution 3. That Prosecution will result in conviction 4. The severity of the punishment is a key factor Rehabilitation- Involves changing offenders attitudes or values so they are less inclined to commit future offenses. Incapacitation- Incarcerating offenders so they are less likely to commit crimes while imprisoned. Essentials of Crime To convict a defendant of a crime the government must: 1. Demonstrate his alleged acts violated a criminal statute 2. Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed those acts and 3. Prove that he had the capacity to form a criminal intent Crimes are statutory offenses. A behavior is not a crime unless congress or state legislature has criminalized it. Constitutional Limitations on Power to Criminalize Behavior The US Constitution prohibits ex post facto criminal laws. This means that to be illegal the offenders act must have been illegal at the time of the offense and the penalty imposed must be the one provided for at the time of her offense. Equal Protection Clause This prohibits criminal statutes that treat certain persons of the same class or arbitrarily discriminate among different classes of people. -The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Fundamental safeguard is a defendant is innocent until proven guilty or the presumption of innocence. The Due Process Clauses require the government to overcome this presumption by proving all charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendant’s Criminal Intent and Capacity Most serious crimes required mens rea or criminal intent as an element. Proof that the defendant had the capacity to form the required criminal intent is a prerequisite of criminal responsibility. Criminal law recognizes three types of incapacity: intoxication, infancy, and insanity. Criminal Procedure Criminal Prosecutions: An Overview -Persons arrested for allegedly committing a crime are taken to the police station and booked. -Booking is an admin procedure for recording the suspect’s arrest. -After the booking police file an arrest report with the prosecutor who decides whether to charge the person with an offense -If she decides to prosecute she prepares a complaint -The suspect is then taken to the judge for an initial appearance. During this appearance the judge informs the suspect of the charges against him and outlines the suspect’s constitutional rights. -In the case of a felony charge there is an additional preliminary hearing where the prosecutor must present enough evidence to determine probable cause that the suspect committed the felony. -If probable cause exists the judge binds over the suspect for a trial in the appropriate court -After the bindover the formal charge against the defendant is filed with the trial court -The formal charge consists of either an information filed by the prosecutor or an indictment returned by a grand jury -Once an information or indictment is filed an arraignment occurs where the defendant is brought before the court, informed of the charges and asked to enter a plea. -The defendant may plea guilty, not guilty or nolo contendere, which means the defendant does not contest the charges but does not admit guilt -Once the plea is entered the defendant chooses what type of trial that will take place. Persons accused of serious crimes for which incarcerations for more than six months is possible have a right to jury trial or he can waive his right and have a bench trial, judge only. Role of Constitutional Safeguards The Bill of Rights and the first 10 Amendments to the US Constitution set forth rights of criminal defendants Fourth Amendment Protects people from arbitrary and unreasonable governmental violations of their privacy rights. -Against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause Reasonable Expectation of Privacy 4th Amendment only protects people from search where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. Warrant Requirement and Exceptions The court held that searches without warrants are unreasonable. Exclusionary Rule Evidence seized in an illegal search without a warrant is inadmissible in court and any information obtained during an illegal search that leads to a later discovery is inadmissible in court as well. The USA Patriot Act A statute that gave the government a broad ranging freedom to conduct searches of property, internet activity, bank accounts and other activities that used to require a warrant. The Fifth Amendment This amendment protects against compelled testimonial self-incrimination by establishing no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. This prevents government coercion of a suspect into making self-incriminating statements. Miranda Rights- a fifth amendment right which requires police to inform suspects before interrogating them their rights to remain silent and have an attorney present. Production of Records The fifth amendment protects people against compelled production of their private papers. However, this is not the case for corporations, since corps do not enjoy 5th amendment rights corporations and corp officers must present business records. Double Jeopardy A 5th amendment provision that states someone can not be tried twice for the same offense. Sixth Amendment Entitles defendant’s to a speedy trial by an impartial jury and gurantees them the right to cross examine the witnesses against them. Also provides the defendant is entitled to a court appointed attorney or the right to provide her own attorney for her defense. White Collar Crimes and the Dilemmas of Corporate Control White Collar Crime is the term used for a variety of non violent criminal offenses committed by business persons and business organizations. Today a corporation may be held liable for criminal offenses committed by employees who acted within the scope of their employment and for the benefit of the corporation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act This act created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in charge of regulation of public accounting firm’s audits of corporations in response to a wave of financial scandal.

My Accounting Career Goals Essay

Everyone has a dream about future. The picture coming to my mind about my future is so fantastic. I dress up in a professional way and go to my own office in a big company. I am an accounting manager of the company whose employees have paid vacations and many other benefits as well. This dream really attracts me. I graduated from a Chinese college with an accounting major. I’ve worked for many years as an accountant and accounting manager. I have a medium level professional certificate of accounting in China. see more:how to write an essay about your future goals Now I wanted to do the same professional job in the U. S as in China. To chase my dream, I knew that first I needed to improve my English skills. I attend an ESL (English as second language) school to build my English foundation. I studied very hard and tried to improve my English. After two years of study, I successfully completed the ESL courses and received an award for outstanding. Then I finished my associate’s degree in Applied Science in Accounting at St. Louis Community College. I applied and was accepted for the undergraduate program in accounting at University of Missouri in St. Louis for next year. After I get my bachelor’s degree, I will look for a job in accounting field. I would like to work at a big company as accountant or accounting analyst. I will use my skills and my passion to help my company in seeking to maximize profit. I have excellent academic record and rich experiences which makes me a good candidate for the Edward Junes internship. I reached 3. 95 GPA at St.  Louis Community College. I was named to the dean’s list for both summer2010 and spring 2011. I completed 12 credit hours in the honor’s program and I received some awards such as honor’s scholar, award for academic excellence of honors program for 2011, Phi Theta kappa honors award and Who’s who among students in American universities & colleges. I was a volunteer of IRS income tax assistance in St. Louis Community College at Meramec campus. This program offered free tax help for taxpayers who qualify. I learned how to communicate with taxpayers and how to help people to do their tax returns. This was a great experience to me focus on income tax. I worked as an accountant for a Non- Profit Organization called IRAQI Student Project. I set up the new book for the organization in QuickBooks system. I adjusted some accounts that had errors. I recorded every transaction in QuickBooks. I build monthly financial statements for board meetings. This experience strengthened my accounting skills in the U. S.  I am working as a treasurer of Student Government Association and a vice president of finance of PTK at St. Louis Community College. During my work, I communicated with a great number of people and I enjoyed it a lot. Those are very good experiences that enhanced my leadership and communication skills. Chasing my dream will motivate my academic work at University of Missouri in St. Louis and help me finally reach my big career goal. I am not a perfect person, but I always pursuit to be perfect at every roles of my life.

Using Mixed Method: Both Qualitative & Quantitative Research

BackgroundOnce upon a time there was a successful line of convenience stores. We'll call this group of stores â€Å"QuickStop†. At some point a staff-member realised that QuickStop seemed to be patronised by many more men than women. This was passed along to the management team and they asked the store tellers to informally keep track of the proportions of men to women who came into their stores. It turned out that the theory seemed to hold true, and in fact far more men patronized QuickStop than did women.This information was passed along to the other managers at other QuickStop stores and they found the same trend. This received some higher level management attention and they began to wonder why this was occurring. Eventually management made the decision that this was too large a group of potential customers to lose, and a decision was eventually made to study this phenomenon and to understand why it was taking place, and if anything could be done about it.Research Objective A research project was designed to understand how women felt about shopping at QuickStop stores and why. It was decided that this research should be qualitative and the specific methodology would be In-depth-Interviews (this is research with one professional interviewer and one respondent at a time – in this case the decision was made because there were suspicions that there could be sensitive issues that wouldn't be discussed as candidly in a group setting).Qualitative ResearchAbout two dozen current or potential female customers were paid to come into a research facility to discuss the use of convenience stores in general, and later in the interviews the discussion was directed specifically to QuickStop convenience stores, in particular. The results were very surprising to the management team. The major qualitative findings included  the following:i. Women viewed convenience stores to be primarily designed for men, with little or no consideration for women,ii. The bathroo ms at convenience stores were believed to be the dirtiest that could be found in a city – â€Å"gross† was the most common description – and that perception permeated everything that women felt about convenience stores in generaliii. QuickStop was seen as one of the worst of convenience stores â€Å"kind of the place for a man to buy gas, get a six-pack of cheap beer and cigarettes, but not the kind of place I want to go†.Quantitative ResearchOnce the management team had an understanding of what issues they faced with female customers, they felt that they needed to understand how broadly these beliefs were held. Now they needed to get some hard numbers, and that meant that they needed to conduct quantitative market research. The research objective for this phase of research were:i. Understand how female customers of QuickStop differ from those that don't regularly visit these stores.ii. Understand whether or not a renovation of QuickStop could entice each group to visit more frequently (or at all depending on whether the respondent currently avoided QuickStop entirely).For the quantitative phase of research they decided to conduct 250 telephone interviews with a combination of female respondents. The requirements to participate in this phase of research were that: half of the respondents stated that they had used QuickStop at least five times in the last year, and the other half admitted to intentionally avoiding QuickStop altogether, although they did use other brands of convenience stores. The major results  from the quantitative phase indicated that:a. Over 76% of all female QuickStop customers were women under 30 years old, without children, while women with children and with higher incomes were 5 times less likely to shop at QuickStopb. The good news was that of the women who didn't currently use QuickStop, 64% said that if these stores were to update their color schemes, clean up their bathrooms and update their health and f eminine products that they would be willing to try QuickStop again.The two phases of research (qualitative + quantitative) gave the QuickStop management team a very good understanding of where they currently stood with female customers and why. Their quantitative research also indicated that those women who were not currently using their stores would â€Å"forgive† them if they changed their ways. Their decision now was to decide if gaining more middle-aged women as customers was worth the cost of updating their stores and spending more money to keep them clean and neat, and better stocked with the types of products that middle-aged women with children needed.Research note: in general when conducting two phases of research (in this case qualitative and quantitative market research) it's most often the case that the first phase (qualitative research) is conducted first as a â€Å"lead-in†. Qualitative research tends to help the management team understand the underlying issues, and the second phase (quantitative in this case) helps to understand how pervasive/wide spread these feelings/attitudes are among a certain target audience.

Pain and the Role of the Nurse in Helping Patients Manage Factors Assignment - 1

Pain and the Role of the Nurse in Helping Patients Manage Factors affecting it - Assignment Example Pain is difficult phenomenon to define. This is because of it is a personal and subjective experience and no tow people will experience pain in exactly the same way. It has been defined in many ways. The International Association of Pain (IASP) defines it as â€Å"an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.† A second definition defines pain as â€Å"†whatever the experiencing person says it is, and existing whenever the person says it does.† Al these explain to us that acrually there is no standard definition of pain but it can be seen as something that makes a person uncomfortable and therefore necessitates the individual to seek medical attention because they are unable to stand the its effects. There exist behavioural and emotional factors that contribute to pain. The behavioural factors include any habit or action of an individual that contributes to the pain syndrome. The factors can be contorlled by the individual, they are modifiable and thus can respond to behaviour modification programs. These may include factors such as improper jaw opening, continuous application of pressure on body parts, gum chewing etc. on the other hand emotional factors are the psychological factors that contribute to pain and these include stress, depression and anxiety among others. These factors result in pain in many ways and it is important to deal with the root cause of each facotr if the pain is to be managed effectively .

Darfur Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Darfur - Essay Example c warfare between the Sudanese central government and a number of insurgent movements since February 2003; these groups are demanding rights for the local peoples and more state investment in their marginalized region†. In other words, the main reason for the appearance and the development of violence in the state has been the opposition between the government’s decisions and the willing of the major part of the population. It should be noticed that the consequences of the development of this conflict have been severe. More specifically, it is noticed in the Africa Studies Centre (2007) that â€Å"at the start of the armed conflict, Darfur, which is the size of France, had a population of about 6 million (virtually all Muslims) but the number is significantly lower today due to mass killings, disease, famine and forced expulsions akin to ethnic cleansing caused by the ‘scorched earth’ military actions of the government troops and local militias; these milit ias, known as the ‘Janjawiid’, have been largely recruited from Arabized peoples from northern and eastern Darfur†. The main reason for the continuation of the above described situation cannot be precisely described, however it could be considered that the oppositions in interests of the state and those of the rebels is more likely to have led to this result. The development of the conflict in Darfur is described on a report of BBC News (2007) according to which â€Å"The conflict began in the arid and impoverished region early in 2003 after a rebel group began attacking government targets, saying the region was being neglected by Khartoum; the rebels say the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs; Darfur, which means land of the Fur, has faced many years of tension over land and grazing rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs, and farmers from the Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa communities†. In other words, it seems that the conflict in Darf ur has not begun because of a random initiative

The importance of financial literacy among young adults Research Paper

The importance of financial literacy among young adults - Research Paper Example rogram during decision-making and feedback time; other stakeholders should be requested to give their input as experience can reveal many underlying factors. Finally, they should have mentors to guide them on dos and don’ts of successful application of financial literacy skills. According to Chan and Stevens (2003), financial literacy can be explained in two main ways including use of a person’s grasp of mathematical concepts, and understanding and use of financial terminologies. However, financial literacy is different from other forms of financial education by the fact that it is practice-oriented. For instance, a person may have all the information on sound financial management; but if this information is only in the form of the theoretical basis, then this person is illiterate on financial literacy terms. Therefore, for one to be considered financially competent, one must have a full understanding of all financial terminology and apply it in the appropriate context. Moreover, one should have the capacity to use the classroom learnt mathematical concepts at a practical level. The level of use of these two main components of financial literacy should be high, and the two must relate seamlessly to enhance the financial competence of an individual. T his means that a fine grasp of terms and financial ideas should be accompanied by direct or indirect application to one’s life in financial decisions; without application of learnt skills, a person remains financially incompetent regardless of how much one may know about personal finance (Hilgert, Hogarth and Beverly, 2003). Therefore, any syllabus on financial competence must include practical aspects like case studies, real-life examples, and mentorship. Studies have established that though all people need instructions on financial literacy, the levels differ with various factors, most of which are contributed by environmental exposure of a person to instances of financial competence application. This means

How Can Political Factors Affect Finance In Kuwait Research Paper

How Can Political Factors Affect Finance In Kuwait - Research Paper Example The wave of democracy in this country is based on the decision to control oil companies. This is because over 35 percent of the world’s energy consumption is based oil fuels. It is believed that the pivotal factor affecting democratization in Kuwait is the production of oil. This is because the entire economy of Kuwait revolves around oil and other hydrocarbons investments. In addition, the government provides security and employment of people because of acceptance in the recent political order. However, it is also clear that royal Al-Sabah family has ruled the country with an iron fist without detaching themselves from the society and its people due to their vast wealth. The factors of democratization engage in recreation, an essential responsibility in the society of Kuwait. This means that the stronger these institutional factors are entrenched into Kuwaiti’s society the more democracy is achieved. Due to these democratic elements, Kuwait is the chosen country of res earch on how political factors affect finance in Kuwait. The investigative factors in Kuwait go beyond state model. This is because oil factor in this country together with other extreme generous welfares gives the basic reasons why the current state of Kuwait is not developed into a democracy nation. In this research paper, I will investigate how the political system in Kuwait has affected its finance and economy. Democratization in Kuwait Over the years, Kuwait has achieved a transition from non-democratic to a democratic system. However, in order to achieve full democratization in this country, some degree of liberation must occur in the economy. In addition, political liberation must be achieved in order to have economic growth and development. This means the expansion of public space through recognizing and protecting civil and political liberties. In Kuwait, the line between democratization and liberalization is always vague to an extent of confusion (Thuroczy 2010). Although Kuwait has stable political system with citizens voting for their preferred candidate in free and fair elections, the country faces some limitations on how oil is managed. This is because the government collects no key taxes from other resources and thus relies on income achieved from oil and other foreign investments. The effect of oil in this country is therefore, considered the main cause of lack of economic and political reforms. Additionally, other aspects are overlooked and play a great role in the development of politics in Kuwait (Thuroczy 2010). According to UN’s development index, Kuwait is a highly developed country compared to other countries along the Persian Gulf. Although there is no doubt that oil in this country has increased education and income levels of people in this country, there are massive troubles in the welfare of the state (Thuroczy 2010). In addition, there is no maximum guarantee in the employment of the youths in this country. This indicates tha t oil in this country is the biggest hindrance to the progress of democracy and economic growth. Political Analysis It is worth noting that common stock refers to the stake that a person or a registered company owns in a given organization. Such stake gives such a person or organization the power to make important decisions such as voting in the organization. The difference between common stock and preferred stock is that every stakeholder in case of bankruptcy has to be paid first before the common stock holder receives anything. Politics play a critical role in the success of any given organization. This can be attributed to the fact that all actions of an organization have to adhere to the