Bindsell on Some Pre-1800 French and German Central Bank Charters and Regulations

Ulrich Bindseil, European Central Bank, has published Some Pre-1800 French and German Central Bank Charters and Regulations. Here is the abstract.

In some recent studies, the question of the origins of central banking has been revisited, leading to the conclusion that beyond Swedish and British central banking, also a number of earlier European continental central banks would have played a more important role. However, it has been often difficult to access the charters and regulations of these early continental central banks – in particular in English – with Dunbar (1892) being the exception. This note contributes to close this gap in a limited sense by providing some translations of few charters and regulations of pre-1800 central banks from France and Germany, namely of the Hamburger Bank of 1619, the Leipziger Bank of 1698, the Banque Générale of John Law of 1716, the Prussian Royal Bank of 1766, and the Caisse d’Escompte of 1776. These early central banks were of heterogeneous success and duration, and actually some only partially or only temporarily deserved to be called a central bank. Moreover, they did not necessarily apply precisely their charters and regulations. Still, the texts provide important insights into the objectives and design of early continental central banks. This note does provide neither an interpretation, nor discussion, nor comparative review of the charters and regulations covered. However, it provides schematic introductions to each of the early central banks.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Drumbl on The Kapo on film: Tragic Perpetrators and Imperfect Victims

Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University School of Law, has published The Kapo on Film: Tragic Perpetrators and Imperfect Victims as Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2016-13. Here is the abstract.

The Nazis compelled, enlisted, and ‘promoted’ detainees into the administration of the labor and death camps. These detainees were called Kapos. The Kapos constitute a particularly contested, and at times tabooified, element of Holocaust remembrance. Some Kapos deployed their situational authority to ease the conditions of other prisoners, while others acted cruelly and committed abuses. This project explores treatment of the Kapo on film. This paper considers two films: Kapò (1959 dir. Pontecorvo (Italy)) and Kapo (2000 dir. Setton (Israel)), and additionally one stage play, Kapo in Jerusalem (2013 dir. Lerner (Israel)) which derives from a film of the same title (2014 dir. Barbash (Israel)). While these works do not explicitly consider international criminal law, they vivify themes of agency, blame, survival, shame, sacrifice, and recrimination with which law grapples. These two films vary in genre: a pulpy feature fiction film (Kapò (1959)) and a controversially-received documentary reportage (Kapo 2000); the stageplay (Kapo in Jerusalem), itself derivative of a film of the same title, is a fictional (and gripping) drama drawn from the experiences of an actual Auschwitz Kapo. This paper interrogates how these creative works portray victim-perpetrator circularity; how they contribute to history, memory, and recollection; and didactically how they explain ‘what happened,’ ‘why,’ and ‘what to do now’. This paper additionally contrasts cinematographic accounts and criminal law’s accounts, in particular, those in Israel’s Kapo trials. In the 1950’s, the Knesset passed legislation – the Nazi and Nazi Collaboration Punishment Act – to criminally charge suspected Jewish Kapos who had emigrated to the state of Israel following the Holocaust. Authorities conducted approximately forty prosecutions. The trials were awkward, the language of judgment gnarly, the absolutes of conviction or acquittal crudely reductionist, and the judges ‘trembled’ at having to sentence. This paper contends that cinematographic depictions of victim-victimizers can sooth the criminal law’s anxieties by filling spaces ill-served by the criminal law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Habermas on the Making of the German Legal System: A New Book from Cambridge University Press

Rebekka Habermas, Georg-Augst-Universitaet, Goettingen, has published Thieves in Court: The Making of the German Legal System in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (Publications of the German Historical Institute). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the contents.

From the seemingly insignificant theft of some bread and a dozen apples in nineteenth century rural Germany, to the high courts and modern-day property laws, this English-language translation of Habermas' Diebe vor Gericht explores how everyday incidents of petty stealing and the ordinary people involved in these cases came to shape the current legal system. Habermas draws from an unusual cache of archival documents of theft cases, tracing the evolution and practice of the legal system of Germany through the nineteenth century. This close reading, relying on approaches of legal anthropology, challenges long-standing narratives of legal development, state building, and modern notions of the rule of law. Ideal for legal historians and scholars of modern German and nineteenth-century European history, this innovative volume steps outside the classic narratives of legal history and gives an insight into the interconnectedness of social, legal and criminal history.

Proposes a new understanding of legal systems providing readers an alternative to classic narratives of legal development, state building, and modern notions of the rule of law

Offers a transdisciplinary approach by combining legal, criminal, and media history, and history of knowledge

The focus on case-studies in nineteenth-century rural Germany gives an innovative insight into how ordinary people and events influence large scale legal structures

Schmidt on German Free Lawyers, American Legal Realists, and the Transatlantic Turn to "Life," 1903-1933

Katharina Isabel Schmidt, Yale Law School, has published Law, Modernity, Crisis: German Free Lawyers, American Legal Realists, and the Transatlantic Turn to "Life," 1903-1933, at 39 German Studies Review 121 (2016). Here is the abstract.

Scholars have long recognized American jurists’ idiosyncratic commitment to a prudent, pragmatic, and political style of legal reasoning. The origins of this style have been linked to the legacy of the most American legal movement of all: the realists. Conversely, German jurists’ doctrinal, idealistic, and apolitical approach can be tied to the relative failure of Germany’s equivalent movement: the free lawyers. How to account for the seemingly inverse fate of realistic jurisprudential reform projects on both sides of the Atlantic? In this paper I employ transnational history to shed light on this particular instance of German-American divergence.

Here is a link to the article via Project Muse.

Faulkner on Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages: A New Book From Cambridge University Press

Forthcoming: Thomas Faulkner, Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages: The Frankish leges in the Carolingian Period (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series). 

The barbarian law codes, compiled between the sixth and eighth centuries, were copied remarkably frequently in the Carolingian ninth century. They provide crucial evidence for early medieval society, including the settlement of disputes, the nature of political authority, literacy, and the construction of ethnic identities. Yet it has proved extremely difficult to establish why the codes were copied in the ninth century, how they were read, and how their rich evidence should be used. Thomas Faulkner tackles these questions more systematically than ever before, proposing new understandings of the relationship between the making of law and royal power, and the reading of law and the maintenance of ethnic identities. Faulkner suggests major reinterpretations of central texts, including the Carolingian law codes, the capitularies adding to the laws, and Carolingian revisions of earlier barbarian and Roman laws. He also provides detailed analysis of legal manuscripts, especially those associated with the leges-scriptorium. Examines the uses of the leges barbarorum in Carolingian Europe, contributing to a long-standing debate in English and German historiography on the use of written law codes in early medieval Europe. Contributes to the study of early medieval kingship, dispute settlement, ethnic identity and literacy Brings German scholarship to the attention of English speakers, providing Anglophone readers with a guide to otherwise inaccessible work.

More about the publication at the publisher's website here.