Money in the Western Legal Tradition: Middle Ages to Bretton Woods
David Fox and Wolfgang Ernst
Abstract
Monetary law is essential to the functioning of private transactions and international dealings by the state: nearly every legal transaction has a monetary aspect. This book presents an 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 twentieth century. By drawing together, the changing concepts of money and private transactions throughout the ages, the chapters investigate the special contribution made by legal scholars and practitioners to our understanding of money and the laws that govern ... More
Monetary law is essential to the functioning of private transactions and international dealings by the state: nearly every legal transaction has a monetary aspect. This book presents an 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 twentieth century. By drawing together, the changing concepts of money and private transactions throughout the ages, the chapters 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 recognition 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. 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.
Keywords:
monetary law,
legal transaction,
Anglo-American common law,
money,
private,
transactions,
Middle Ages,
banking system,
paper money,
legal doctrines
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198704744 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704744.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
David Fox, editor
Lecturer in Law and Fellow, University of Cambridge and St John's College
Wolfgang Ernst, editor
Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College
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