Law books are boring. Those of us who are involved in the world of law read it and manage it for professional or academic reasons if they are employed in a university setting.
As a general rule they are not a good read. But there are exceptions and I want to refer to a fun and informative book that is worth reading or at least perusing: The fall of the priests and the rise of the lawyerswritten by Philip R. Wood. This author’s thesis is this the decline of religions has been accompanied by an enormous growth in law and in the number of lawyerswith the appearance and development of a widespread morality that the author summarizes in some rules that he calls “rule of law” and which could be translated as “rule of law”, or the submission of all persons and authorities, whether they are private or public, to a set of rules administered by independent and impartial judges.
Philip R. Wood defines and explains these rules ranging from respect for life to the protection of property rights, summarizing their historical origins, but without entering into complex philosophical disquisitions on their origin in divine law (St. Thomas Aquinas) or on the basis of a natural law of a rational nature according to the theories of art Ugo Grotius or Samuel Pufendorf.
Yet, Philip R. Wood’s thesis responds to a Eurocentric approach, and to the crisis of the Christian faith in Europe. Instead, the Muslim religion is in a new phase of expansion in Africa where in some states of Nigeria and in large areas of the Sahel “sharia” prevails. Islam is also very well established in the Indian subcontinent. In countries like the United States, the evangelical movement is very strongwhich partly explains the recent Supreme Court ruling which holds that there is no constitutional right to abortion.
Protests before the US Supreme Court. (Photo: EFE / Michael Reynolds)
Nonetheless, there are parts of this book that are “useful” for any young lawyer as they address the differences between ‘British common law“And the European civil law systems. A difficult task to reveal. I would also like to highlight its division of the world between countries with pro-creditor bankruptcy legislation compared to other countries like ours, with pro-debtor legislation and its impact on the economic future.
Philip R. Wood well explains the primacy of English law and New York law as the law applicable to international loans and guarantees, bond issues and other capital market operations and mergers and acquisitions of large corporations. In the right opinion of him, the use of these legal systems explained by the role of London and New York as world financial centers; in the case of London, because it is a hub for attracting capital from other parts of the world, and New York, because it is the financial capital of the United States, with a market that is not only huge, but also very deep and liquid. .
The author does not analyze the reason for this financial domination. This would lead to economic explanations of the US dollar as a reserve currency or to political explanations such as US hegemony in the international community and would also highlight the existence in both systems of a tradition of independent courts with predictable and established case law in contractual matters. .
Philip R. Wood has dual qualifications as a lawyer and expert in banking and finance law and a university professor at Cambridge and Oxford. I had the pleasure of talking to him when he was a partner in a well-known and excellent international law firm and I remember his insistent opinion on the triumph of English law over that of New York. and the growing use of the former in international operations, which today perhaps we would accept with some reservations due to Brexit. I would also like to highlight his very curious view of land and agriculture as the only real source of wealth, because it creates production surpluses, unlike trade and finance where products are exchanged or interest is generated. All this reminded me of it at the time F. Quesnay and to the 18th century school of French physiocrats, which is still a contradiction in the thinking of someone who was a great bank lawyer, but who believed more in agriculture.
