Monetary law is essential to the functioning of private transactions and international dealings by the state: nearly every legal transaction has a monetary aspect. Money in the Western Legal Tradition presents the first comprehensive analysis of Western monetary law, covering the civil law and Anglo-American common law legal systems from the High Middle Ages up to the middle of the 20th century. Weaving a detailed tapestry of the changing concepts of money and private transactions throughout the ages, the contributors investigate the special contribution made by legal scholars and practitioners to our understanding of money and the laws that govern it. Divided in five parts, the book begins with the coin currency of the Middle Ages, moving through the invention of nominalism in the early modern period to cashless payment and the rise of the banking system and paper money, then charting the progression to fiat money in the modern era. Each part commences with an overview of the monetary environment for the historical period written by an economic historian or numismatist. These are followed by chapters describing the legal doctrines of each period in civil and common law. Each section contains examples of contemporary litigation or statute law which engages with the distinctive issues affecting the monetary law of the period. This interdisciplinary approach reveals the distinctive conception of money prevalent in each period, which either facilitated or hampered the implementation of economic policy and the operation of private transactions.
1: David Fox, François R. Velde, and Wolfgang Ernst: Introduction 2: Christine Desan: Money as a Legal Institution Part I. The Late Middle Ages: Coins and the Law Martin Allen: Currency Depreciation and Debasement in Medieval Europe Fabian Wittreck: Money in Medieval Philosophy Part II. Civil Law Thomas Rüfner: Money in the Roman Law Texts Wolfgang Ernst: The Legists' Doctrines on Money and the Law from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries Andreas Thier: Money in Medieval Canon Law Alain Wijffels: The 'Reduction' of Money in the Low Countries c. 1489-1515. Part III. Money in the Early Modern Period: The Triumph of Nominalism Michael North: Monetary Reforms in the Holy Roman Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries David Fox: The Enforcement of Nominal Values to Money in the Medieval and Early Modern Common Law David Fox: The Case of Mixt Monies (1604) Wim Decock: Spanish Scholastics on Money and Credit Clausdieter Schott: German Law Faculties and Benches of Jurymen (Schöffenstühle) on Loans and Inflation: Legal Doctrine and Seventeenth Century Legal Practice Anja Amend-Traut: Monetary and Currency Problems in the Light of Early Modern Litigation Part III. The Evolution of Cashless Payment: Bank Money William Roberds and François Velde: Early Public Banks I: Ledger-Money Banks Benjamin Geva: 'Bank Money': The Rise, Fall, and Metamorphosis of the 'Transferable Deposit' James Steven Rogers: Early English Law of Checks Benjamin Geva: The Order to Pay Money in Medieval Continental Europe Stephan Meder: Giro Payments and the Beginning of the Modern Cashless Payment System Part IV. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: The Emergence of Paper Money William Roberds and François Velde: Early Public Banks II: Banks of Issue Helmut Siekmann: Deposit Banking and the Use of Monetary Instruments James Steven Rogers: Early English Law of Bank Notes Kenneth G.C. Reid: Banknotes and their Vindication in Eighteenth-Century Scotland Rastko Vrbaski: Multiple Currency Clauses and Currency Reform: The Austrian Coupon Cases Part V. The Twentieth Century: Fiat Money Michael Bordo and Angela Redish: Putting the 'System' in the International Monetary System Peter Kugler: The Bretton Woods System: Design and Operation L. Randall Wray: From the State Theory of Money to Modern Money: An Alternative to Ecomomic Orthodoxy François R. Velde: Hyperinflations of the Early Twentieth Century Roy Kreitner: Responses to Crisis: Refiguring the Monetary and the Fiscal in the Great Depression David Fox: Monetary Obligations and the Fragmentation of the Sterling Monetary Union Jan Thiessen: The German Hyperinflation of the 1920s Case Study: Swedish Government Bonds, their Gold Dollar Clause, and the 1933 Roosevelt Act - Georges Sauser-Halls Opinion on Loans issued by the Government of Sweden
David Fox is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge. He specializes in law of property, trusts, and the legal aspects of money, and his publications include Property Rights in Money (2008). Wolfgang Ernst is Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College.
Reviews for Money in the Western Legal Tradition: Middle Ages to Bretton Woods
The text should be of value to academics and others with an interest in the theory of money, whether from a legal, economic or historical perspective. It may also provide inspiration to practitioners searching for novel solutions to legal dilemmas created by ever more complex developments in the international monetary system. * Charles Proctor, Journal of World Investment and Trade *
