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Money in the Western Legal Tradition – Middle Ages to Bretton Woods - Oxford Scholarship Online
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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

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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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Acknowledgements

Table of Cases

Table of Legislation

List of Abbreviations

List of Contributors

Introduction

1 Monetary History between Law and Economics

David Fox, François R. Velde, and Wolfgang Ernst

2 Money as a Legal Institution

Christine Desan

Part I The Late Middle Ages: Coins and the Law

I Monetary Environment

3 Currency Depreciation and Debasement in Medieval Europe

Martin Allen

4 Money in Medieval Philosophy

Fabian Wittreck

5 The Last Scholastic on Money

Stefan Kötz

II Civil Law

6 Money in the Roman Law Texts

Thomas Rüfner

7 The Legists’ Doctrines on Money and the Law from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Centuries

Wolfgang Ernst

8 Money in Medieval Canon Law

Andreas Their

9 The ‘Reduction’ of Money in the Low Countries c.1489–1515

Alain Wijffels

Part II Money in the Early Modern Period: The triumph of Nominalism

I Monetary Environment

10 Monetary Reforms in the Holy Roman Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Michael North

II Common Law

11 The Enforcement of Nominal Values to Money in the Medieval and Early Modern Common Law

David Fox

12 The Case of Mixt Monies (1604)

David Fox

III Civil Law

13 The Effect of Debasements on Pre-existing Debts in Early Modern Jurisprudence

Harry Dondorp

14 Spanish Scholastics on Money and Credit

Wim Decock

15 German Law Faculties and Benches of Jurymen (Schöffenstühle) on Loans and Inflation

Clausdieter Schott

16 Monetary and Currency Problems in the Light of Early Modern Litigation

Anja Amend-Traut

Part III The Evolution of Cashless Payment: Bank Money

I Monetary Environment

17 Early Public Banks I

William Roberds and François R. Velde

II Common Law

18 ‘Bank Money’

Benjamin Geva

19 Early English Law of Checks

James Steven Rogers

III Civil Law

20 The Order to Pay Money in Medieval Continental Europe

Benjamin Geva

21 Giro Payments and the Beginnings of the Modern Cashless Payment System

Stephan Meder

Part IV The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: The Emergence of Paper Money

I Monetary Environment

22 Early Public Banks II

William Roberds and François R. Velde

23 Deposit Banking and the Use of Monetary Instruments

Helmut Siekmann

II Common Law and mixed legal systems

24 Early English Law of Bank Notes

James Steven Rogers

25 Banknotes and their Vindication in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Kenneth G. C. Reid

III Civil Law

26 Multiple Currency Clauses and Currency Reform

Rastko Vrbaski

Part V The Twentieth Century: Fiat Money

I Monetary Environment

27 Putting the ‘System’ in the International Monetary System

Michael Bordo and Angela Redish

28 The Bretton Woods System

Peter Kugler

29 From the State Theory of Money to Modern Money

L. Randall Wray

30 Hyperinflations of the Early Twentieth Century

François R. Velde

II Common Law

31 Responses to Crisis

Roy Kreitner

32 Monetary Obligations and the Fragmentation of the Sterling Monetary Union

David Fox

III Civil Law

33 The German Hyperinflation of the 1920s

Jan Thiessen

34 Swedish Government Bonds, their Gold Dollar Clause, and the 1933 Roosevelt Act

—Georges Sauser-Hall’s ‘Opinion on Loans issued by the Government of Sweden’—

End Matter

Bibliographies

Index