Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Law merchant: The Law Merchant (lex mercatoria) was a set of commercial laws and customs used by merchants in medieval Europe. It developed independently of national laws to facilitate trade across regions. Over time, it influenced modern commercial law, promoting standards like contracts, negotiable instruments, and dispute resolution in international commerce. See also Law, Legislation, Rule of law._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Donald J. Boudreaux on Law Merchant - Dictionary of Arguments
Boudreaux II 47 Law Merchant/lex mercatoria/Boudreaux: When trade in the Mediterranean region began to rapidly expand a thousand years ago, disputes between merchants naturally occurred with greater frequency. There was, though, no single sovereign power with authority over all of these merchants who traded with each other - some of whom were in Genoa, others in Venice, others in Umbria, and yet others in the several other different independent political jurisdictions that were then spread throughout the Mediterranean region. Nevertheless, a highly complex and uniform system of law emerged in this large region to settle commercial disputes. This law is today known in the English-speaking world as the Law Merchant. >Legislation/Hayek, >Law, >Laws, >Law and economics. 1) The first is that the Law Merchant evolved spontaneously out of the actions of merchants; it wasn't designed and imposed by a king, military general, or parliament. Routine merchant practices came to be known by the merchants and these routines created expectations in all merchants about how they and their fellows would act under different circumstances. But conflicts arose when these expectations were violated - either intentionally or unintentionally - or when new occurrences happened that were out of the ordinary. Merchants themselves established and manned courts to settle these conflicts. These courts generally ruled in favour of those parties whose actions were most consistent with established merchant practices - and, hence, these courts generally ruled against those parties whose actions were deemed to have run counter to established merchant practice. Through this process, law is created and modified by ongoing human practices and interactions, and this law is further refined and spelled out in decisions by (…) courts. Boudreaux II 48 2) A second feature of the Law Merchant is that it was widely obeyed even though there was no government to enforce it. For starters, each merchant typically had powerful incentives on his own to follow the law - in the same way that you have incentives to follow the law of allocating parking spaces in crowded parking lots. By "breaking the law," you risk retaliation by others. >Legislation/Boudreaux, >Laws, >Society/Hayek, >Rules._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 Boudreaux II Donald J. Boudreaux The Essential Hayek Vancouver: Fraser Institute 2014 |
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