JOURNAL: Rechtsgeschichte XXXIV (2026) [OPEN ACCESS]

(image source: MPILHLT)

Prof. Dave De ruysscher published an article on "The Bill of Exchange and the Dynamics of Legal Interpretation (15th–18th Centuries)"
Abstract:

This article analyses the developments of the law of bills of exchange in the later Middle Ages and early modern period from the vantage point of »legal dynamics«. From the 14th century onwards, the bill of exchange developed in interactions between international mercantile practice, legislative approaches and juristic interpretation. Close attention to mercantile documents and sources of practice allows us to nuance a largely »monolithic« image of the emergence of bills of exchange and their corresponding norms. For a long time, financial instruments have been presented as mere functional creations, derived from mercantile practice. This presentation went together with an assumption of continuity. With regard to bills of exchange, this resulted in the identification of the late medieval varieties with the standardised bill of exchange of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, for a long period, between approximately 1450 and 1680, the rules surrounding bills of exchange, in particular those concerning the allocation of liability between parties involved, were uncertain or even indeterminate. Different approaches and principles coexisted in Western Europe; there was no legal authority that was considered leading. Slowly, a combination of Genoese and Dutch approaches prevailed. The eventual success of the Genoese-Dutch views was not a consequence of their intrinsic superiority but rather followed from concrete circumstances. Legal developments were dynamic; changes in the legal interpretation of jurists resulted from the changes in the use of financial instruments, changes that interacted with economic and political contexts. This legal interpretation complemented mercantile practices and normative ideas of traders that themselves were often too crude to solve complex legal problems.

Read the article here: DOI 10.12946/rg34/022-040

Prof. Frederik Dhondt reviewed a work on Agents of Overseas European Expansion in the same issue. See here: DOI 10.12946/rg34/232-235.