Law, Business, and Legitimacy

The intention of this chapter is to formulate thought-provoking ideas about legitimacy and close neighbor terms. In particular, the chapter considers “legitimacy” to not only be a very relevant term for business ethics in general but also highly relevant in answering the question of how business ethics relates to law. Rather than defining legitimacy right away, the authors use the first part of this chapter to develop a comprehensive understanding of legitimacy by relating it to close neighbor terms, such as power, recognition, trust, justification, and criticism, on the one hand, and to legality in its contrast to and overlap with legitimacy, on the other. In the second part of this chapter, we offer concrete (real-world) examples and ideas of the interaction between legitimacy and law. These examples are drawn from traditional legal disciplines such as tax law and human rights law, as well as more modern legal preoccupations such as intellectual property law, laws relating to artificial intelligence and autonomous cars, the latest organic seed certification laws, etc. We envisage these examples as food-for-thought for future business ethics teaching and research at the interface of legitimacy and legality and business ethics and its legal contexts.