COBE professor publishes second edition of business law textbook

Dan Davidson, chair of Radford University's Department of Accounting, Finance and Business Law in the College of Business and Economics, has published the second edition of his textbook, "Business Law: Principles and Cases in the Legal Environment."

The textbook is Davidson's third with Aspen Publishers, a subsidiary of Wolters-Kluwer Law and Business Publishing. Davidson co-authored the book with long-time writing partner Lynn Forsythe, a business law professor at the Craig School of Business at California State University, Fresno.

The writing tandem released the first edition in 2011 and produced another Aspen textbook, "Business in the Contemporary Legal Environment," in 2013.

"Business Law: Principles and Cases in the Legal Environment," the second edition, "continues to offer a readable, rigorous, and practical introduction to business law—in a format improved to enhance learning and understanding," said a statement from Aspen. With a thorough explanation of the legal and regulatory issues affecting businesses, Davidson and Forsythe utilize outlines, exhibits, questions and problems to help students get the most out of each chapter."

Davidson, who has been teaching at RU for 28 years, said the textbook addresses a number of topics, including bankruptcy, contracts, business organizations, government regulations and property protection. He said the book’s content meets course requirements of Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited colleges and universities. RU's COBE is accredited by the AASCB.

"This is a basic business law book," he said. "Depending on the school, it covers two or three semesters of business law."

What are some of the differences in the first and second editions?

Davidson said he and Forsythe reduced the book by about 10 percent without dropping any of the content. "We greatly shortened the cases at the end of the chapters, and we went to a different font and to a two column layout instead of one," Davidson explained. "We cut over 300 pages."

The professor noted that some of the chapters had to be longer because of changes in law over the past couple of years. "Those are things we had to address," he said. "It was our goal to make the book shorter, but we both agreed if the content was important, we would keep it and the length didn’t matter."

Davidson uses the textbook in his Business Law 304 class.