EBOOK Concise Australian Commercial Law

The sixth edition of Concise Australian Commercial Law has been updated to incorporate the many changes to the law that have occurred since the fifth edition was published. New and interesting contract, torts and consumer protection cases have been decided and significant legislative amendments have been passed, particularly in relation to the Australian Consumer Law and the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). In general terms, we have two main objectives when writing the sixth edition. The first is to provide students with the opportunity to develop a general understanding and awareness of the legal and regulatory environment of business. It is vital that students, particularly (but not only) business students, have acquired a certain level of legal literacy so that they do not feel like “fish out of water” when dealing with lawyers and regulators. The second is to examine in some detail the main commercial law topics – the law of contract, the tort of negligence, consumer protection law, the law of agency, the law of business organisations and business ethics – in a way that strikes a balance between, on the one hand, the need for clarity and accessibility and, on the other, the need for the material to be challenging and engaging, useful and relevant. Further, when writing the text and selecting cases, legislation and other material, we have kept in mind the needs of non-law students, most of whom are coming to a law unit for the first time and some of whom are coming from countries for whom a common law legal system is completely foreign. Finally, the sixth edition was written in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic that has profoundly changed our world. Apart from the obvious pain and suffering it has caused to so many, its effect on the law and legal system is already apparent – reassessing the very nature of the federation, its impact on termination of contracts, the need to soften insolvency law to name a few. The sixth edition discusses these and other COVID-19-related changes and, wherever possible, the tutorial activities have been revised to focus on the legal issues that have arisen in the wake of the pandemic. To promote student understanding, there are diagrams, flowcharts and tables as well as a revised and expanded set of tutorial activities and comprehension questions on key points at the end of each chapter, and an extended introductory section on approaching the study of commercial law, including advice on how to approach assessment tasks.