In this important book, Amalia Kessler analyzes the records of the eighteenth-century Parisian Merchant Court. This court adjudicated disputes among merchants and disputes relating to negotiable instruments, even when parties were not merchants. Its history sheds light not only on commercial law and practice, but also on discursive and political developments contributing to the French Revolution.

The book addresses two principal issues—how the Parisian Merchant Court adjudicated disputes and how the court's adjudicative and lobbying activities contributed to the surprising survival of the court after the revolution, in spite of the demise of the guilds and other corporate structures which previously had undergirded the court and commercial life in pre-Revolutionary France.

Judges of the Parisian Merchant Court were selected by merchants through a complicated voting procedure. Judges were usually members of the merchant elite belonging to the most prominent guilds. The court's caseload was extremely high, over 50,000 per year. To deal with this caseload, most cases were sent to arbitrators for resolution. Arbitrators were usually guild leaders, or, in a surprisingly large number of cases involving rural disputes, parish priests. The arbitrator usually tried to reconcile the parties, but if settlement was not possible, he wrote a report suggesting a resolution. Such reports were usually adopted and enforced by the court. Over 5,000 arbitral reports survive, mostly from the late eighteenth century. This book is based on detailed analysis of 295 arbiters' reports from the period 1783–1785, as well as exploration of other reports, court correspondence, and related records.

Arbitral reports reveal a surprisingly flexible adjudicatory style which highlights the difference between “law on the books” and “law in action.” Although this distinction is a staple of Anglo-American legal history, its application to continental jurisdictions is less common, probably because case materials are usually accorded less respect and attention in civil law jurisdictions. Two examples of the deviation between written law and adjudicatory practice are particularly striking. In partnership disputes, the court frequently assigned all liability to the party it considered more culpable, even though formal law held all general partners liable. Kessler interprets this and similar cases as exemplifying the court's emphasis on “merchant virtue.” Similarly, an ordinance of 1673 forbade blank endorsements of negotiable instruments. A blank endorsement is an endorsement which does not mention the name of the endorsee and other information. The ban on blank endorsements was intended to prevent fraud, but blank endorsements were useful, because they allowed agents to transfer instruments without going back to the principal. Merchant arbiters and judges were surprisingly willing to enforce transfers effected through blank endorsements. Judges and arbitrators ignored the formal law, because they saw emerging commercial practices as justified by the “social utility” of credit (p. 228).

Although Kessler devotes only a few pages to the issue, her study of the Parisian Merchant Court is an important contribution to the debate about the nature of the “law merchant.” Advocates of a romantic view of commercial law argue that European commercial law arose out of international custom authored and enforced by merchants with an eye toward efficiency. The records of the Parisian Merchant Court suggest that this view has some merit. The law was largely made by merchants, and they were willing to disregard royal law which they perceived as impeding commerce. On the other hand, many arbiters were priests, not merchants, and even merchants seem to have been as concerned about morality and virtue as efficiency. More damaging to the romantic view, international commerce seems to have played only a minor role, and the whole system of merchant law and adjudication was established and overseen by the French state. Of course, the study of one court in one period is not sufficient to overturn received wisdom about the law merchant. Matters may have been different in the Middle Ages, in London or in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, Kessler's book is a good illustration of the sort of research which will be necessary to shed light on the origins and character of European commercial law.

Kessler, especially in the introduction, conclusion, and chapter 6, is particularly interested in the political implications of the arguments advanced in and by the Parisian Merchant Court. It is a striking fact that, in 1790, the Constituent Assembly of revolutionary France chose to retain the merchant courts of the Old Regime with only minor changes, even as it dramatically restructured all other courts. When the Assembly did so, however, it severed the court from its roots in the guild system (which it soon abolished). Instead, the Assembly justified the court's continued existence with reference its role in facilitating commerce. Kessler rightly sees precursors to these political arguments in jurisdictional arguments made by the Parisian Court itself in the pre-Revolutionary period. In arguing for jurisdiction over negotiable instruments cases even when the parties were not merchants, the Court asserted that this jurisdiction was necessary to support credit markets that were essential to the French economy. This, and similar arguments, marked a shift from earlier more corporatist conceptions of the court as serving the merchant community and its guilds. Kessler goes further and argues that the Court's discursive practices—emphasizing its role in facilitating commerce over inter-merchant dispute resolution—“contributed to corporatism's demise” (p. 293). This provocative causal claim, however, requires more substantiation. It would require examination not only of arguments produced by the Merchant Court, but the relative influence of such arguments and other sources of anti-corporatist thought during the Revolutionary period.

In sum, this is a significant work which links legal history, commercial practice, and political discourse in eighteenth-century France. It charts a path, raises important questions, and provides a useful model for future studies of merchant law and the relationship between law and politics.