529:(from the Latin for "merchant law") is the body of commercial law used by merchants throughout Europe during the medieval period. It evolved similar to English common law as a system of custom and best practice, which was enforced through a system of merchant courts along the main trade routes. It functioned as the international law of commerce. It emphasised contractual freedom and alienability of property, while shunning legal technicalities and deciding cases ex aequo et bono. A distinct feature was the reliance by merchants on a legal system developed and administered by them. States or local authorities seldom interfered, and did not interfere a lot in internal domestic trade. Under lex mercatoria trade flourished and states took in large amounts of taxation."
610:, "Stateless, Not Lawless: Voluntaryism & Arbitration" by Carl Watner. His research suggests that the Law Merchant may not have been, as characterized in the preceding unsigned and unreferenced comment, "understood as exceptions to the regulations ruling the ordinary Common Law process. The Lex Mercatoria was therefore already in the Middle ages seen as the daugther of the Common Law and therefore as part of English law." For example, in William C. Wooldridge's UNCLE SAM THE MONOPOLY MAN, on page 96 the author writes "edieval merchants must have considered their interests better served by voluntary submission of disputes to one of their own than by formal common-law actions."
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Lord
Chancellor. Obviously he is reporting the practice in England at the time, and what historians adduce from matters ahors de record, outside the record, is quite immaterial. More generally, all reasonable men know there is a law merchant, universal law, involved in trading. If you don't, it's because you've failed to mature into a fully developed human, so you're governed by civil law, as an infant who cannot speak and claim to be a trader exempt from innovations. Free trade is ancient, innovations in restraint of free trade are illegal.
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My general problem with addressing legal questions as historical questions is that law is not a genre of history, so historical analysis of what may or not be done is irrelevant. We know law by precedents, e.g. the case cited calling the law merchant the law of nature. That is a good case, quoting a
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There are so many issues with the article, the main one being that most of the contents is unsourced, that I think it will probably be best to just remove most of the unsourced content and just stick to a simple definition. Right now it feels like reading an essay written by someone trying to push
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was a body of trading principles that evolved as a system of custom and best practice, common to merchants and traders in Europe, emphasizing contractual freedom and enabling quick dispute resolution by merchant courts along the main trade routes. A key characteristic of the system was that local
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While there is no doubt that a body of rules named "Lex
Mercatoria" existed in England since the late 13th c., there is heavy doubt that anything comparable existed on the continent, let alone identical rules all over Europe. One of the various reasons for doubt is the fact that the English Lex
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Mercatoria-rules regarded procedure and were understood as exceptions to the regulations ruling the ordinary Common Law process. The Lex
Mercatoria was therefore already in the Middle ages seen as the daugther of the Common Law and therefore as part of English law.
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Legal historians have uttered these and various other doubts since the late 1990ies but apparently the partisans of the modern Lex
Mercatoria don't want to confuse their minds with historical facts. For further reference see among many others:
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Emily Kadens, The Myth of the
Customary Law Merchant, Texas Law Review, Vol. 90, 2012; Vito Piergiovanni (ed.), From lex mercatoria to commercial law, 2005; Albrecht Cordes, The search for a medieval Lex mercatoria, 2003, online available at
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authorities opted to interfere as little as possible, thus leaving merchants with a significant amount of contractual freedom, which lead to increased levels of trade and, as a result, increased tax revenues."
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By Claus D. Zimmermann, which can be found on Google Books. For example the following is from
Zimmermann's book on page 81: "Literally meaning 'merchant law' the medieval
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Was there actually a guy called Lex
Mercatorius? That would be quite a coincidence since the words actually mean merchant law. Perhaps it was a fable?
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Zimmerman references: Len S Sealy and Richard JA Hooley,
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