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This magnificent new book draws on Professor Boris Kozolchyk’s theoretical and empirical studies over a period of many decades into the development of principles of contract and commercial law in a range of legal families and systems. Founder, President and Director of the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade in Tucson, Arizona, since its establishment some 22 years ago, he has brought his wealth of experience to bear on a comprehensive analysis of law as a tool for economic development. The scope of this work is astonishing both in its subject-matter and in the variety of sources on which it draws.
The impact of business practice on the development of commercial law is a topic of endless fascination both to commercial lawyers and jurisprudes. Even such a basic question as “What converts business practice into law?” is fraught with controversy and circular reasoning. This new work focuses on the opposing factors that motivate business practice: altruism and selfishness, co-operation and competition, brotherhood and adversarial behaviour. Interesting too is the contrast in some jurisdictions between commerce between fellow nationals and trading with foreigners. So we are told that in the Japan domestic market co-operation prevails over market freedom, while in the international market Japanese commercial activity is characterised by market competitiveness and low prices.
The span of this book is enormous. In time it ranges from the pre-commercial era, with its emphasis on community and family relationships rather than on contract, through Roman law, mediaeval law and the evolution of powerful guilds to the age of codification and the development of modern commercial law, noting the influence of the economic analysis of law. In space it traverses old and new legal systems in every legal family, covering a vast number of jurisdictions and of legal, economic and anthropological sources.
What has characterised Boris Kozolchyk’s writings from long ago is his focus on merchant motivation, on what makes the law work, on the concept of the bonus vir and the value added by altruism, and this is the thread that runs throughout this magisterial work of superb scholarship. This is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the development of commercial law as an instrument of social and economic policy.
ROY GOODE
OXFORD
December 2013