Money in the Western Legal Tradition Middle Ages to Bretton Woods

by Fox, David; Ernst, Wolfgang

• ISBN13: 9780198704744
• ISBN10: 0198704747
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-03-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

David Fox, Lecturer in Law and Fellow, University of Cambridge and St John's College,Wolfgang Ernst, Professor of Roman Law and Private Law, University of Zurich

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 Professor of Roman Law and Private Law at the University of Zurich. He is President of the Research Council of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and specializes in Roman and Civil Law. From October 2015 he will be Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, David Fox
2. Money as a Legal Institution, Christine Desan
Part I. Coins and the Law
Currency Depreciation and Debasement in Medieval Europe, Martin Allen
Money in Medieval Philosophy, Fabian Wittreck
Money in the Roman Law Texts, Thomas Rufner
The Legists' Doctrines on Money and the Law, Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries, Wolfgang Ernst
Money in Medieval Canon Law, Andreas Thier
The Spanish Scholastics on Money and Credit, Wim Decock
Gabriel Biel's Monetary Theory, Stefan Kotz
The 'Reduction' of Money in the Low Countries, c. 1489-1515, Alain Wijffels
Part II. Money in the Early Modern Period: Inventing Nominalism
Monetary Reforms in the Holy Roman Empire, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Michael North
The Enforcement of Nominal Values of Money in Medieval and Early Modern Common Law, David Fox
The Case of Mixt Monies (1604), David Fox
The Effects of Debasements on Debts in Early Modern Jurisprudence, Harry Dondorp
German Law Faculties and Benches of Jurymen (Schoffenstuhle) on Loans and Inflation: Legal Doctrine and Seventeenth Century Legal Practice, Clausdieter Schott
Early Modern Monetary Policy in the Light of Contemporary Adjudication, Anja Amend-Traut
Part III. The Emergence of Cashless Payment: Bank Money
Early Public Banks I: Ledger Money Banks, William Roberds and Francois Velde
The Order to Pay Money in Medieval Continental Europe, Benjamin Geva
Early English Law of Checks, James Steven Rogers
'Bank Money': The Rise, Fall, and Metamorphosis of the 'Transferable Deposit in Common Law, Benjamin Geva
Giro Payments and the Beginning of the Modern Cashless Payment System, Stephan Meder
Part IV. The Emergence of Paper Money
Early Public Banks II: Banks of Issue, William Roberds and Francois Velde
Deposit Banking and the Use of Monetary Instruments, Helmut Siekmann
Early English Law of Bank Notes, James Steven Rogers
Bank Notes and their Vindication in Eighteenth Century Scotland, Kenneth G.C. Reid
Multiple Currency Clauses and Currency Reform: The Austrian Coupon Cases, Rastko Vrbaski
Part V. Fiat Money
Putting the 'System' in the International Monetary System, Michael Bordo and Angela Redish
The Bretton Woods System: Design and Operation, Peter Kugler
Hyper-Inflations in the Early Twentieth Century, Francois Velde
From the State Theory of Money to Modern Monetary Theory, L. Randall Wray
Responses to Crisis: Re-configuring the Monetary and the Fiscal in the Great Depression, Roy Kreitner
Monetary Obligations and the Fragmentation of the Sterling Monetary Union, David Fox
The German Hyper-Inflation of the 1920s, Jan Thiessen
Case Study: Swedish Government Bonds, their Gold Dollar Clause and the 1933 Roosevelt Act