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From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs
Faculty Scholarship
Modern advocates of corporate self-regulation have drawn unlikely inspiration from the Middle Ages. On the traditional view of history, medieval merchants who wandered from fair to fair were not governed by domestic laws, but by their own lex mercatoria, or "law merchant. " This law, which uniformly regulated commerce across Europe, was supposedly produced by an autonomous merchant class, interpreted in private courts, and enforced through private sanctions rather than state coercion. Contemporary writers have treated global corporations as descendants of these itinerant traders, urging them to replace conflicting national laws with a transnational law of their own creation. The …
Private Law Beyond The State? Europeanization, Globalization, Privatization, Ralf Michaels, Nils Jansen
Private Law Beyond The State? Europeanization, Globalization, Privatization, Ralf Michaels, Nils Jansen
Faculty Scholarship
Although the changing relation between private law and the state has become the subject of many debates, these debates are often unsatisfactory. Concepts like 'law', 'private law', and 'globalization' have unclear and shifting meanings; discussions are confined to specific questions and do not connect with similar discussions taking place elsewhere. In order to initiate the necessary broader approach, this article brings together the pertinent themes and aspects from various debates. It proposes a conceptual clarification of key notions in the debate- "private law," "state," "Europeanization," "globalization," and "privatization"- that should be of use beyond the immediate purposes of the rest …