The law merchant, absorbed from merchant courts, gave common law its commercial document doctrines.

Evidence

Through fair courts and merchant courts, English law and practice recognized the merchant’s ways of doing business. From these sources, English law learned to handle the documents from which modern checks, notes, bills of exchange, and bills of lading are descended. Eventually, the ordinary courts absorbed the law merchant into the bloodstream of the common law, and the merchant courts decayed. By the seventeenth century, this process was well advanced. A late key figure in this development was Lord Mansfield, who died in 1793. Mansfield, deeply versed in Roman and continental law, had a sure touch for commercial cases. His decisions were sensitive and responsive to the merchant’s needs and ways. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 113

Categorization

• XREF: The absorption of merchant custom into judge-made law here foreshadows how uniform commercial codes and commercial practice re-entered American law. — connects to: Medieval merchants developed private commercial law without state enforcement — PAUL R. MILGRO, PAUL R. MILGRO - THE ROLE OF…, 8

Broader Connections

• Medieval merchants developed private commercial law without state enforcement #corroborates (0.85) — PAUL R. MILGRO, PAUL R. MILGRO - THE ROLE OF…, 8