A Socio Legal Theory Of Money For The Digital Commercial Society

This book poses the question: do we need a new body of regulations and the constitution of new regulatory agents to face the evolution of money in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? After the Global Financial Crisis and the subsequent introduction of Distributed Ledger Technologies in monetary matters, multiple opinions claim that we are in the middle of a financial revolution that will eliminate the need for central banks and other financial institutions to form bonds of trust on our behalf. In contrast to these arguments, this book argues that we are not witnessing a revolutionary expression, but an evolutionary one that we can trace back to the very origin of money. Accordingly, the book provides academics, regulators and policy makers with a multidisciplinary analysis that includes elements such as the relevance of intellectual property rights, which are disregarded in the legal analysis of money. Furthermore, the book proposes the idea that traditional analyses on the exercise of the lex monetae ignore the role of inside monies and technological infrastructures developed and supported by the private sector, as exemplified in the evolution of the cryptoassets market and in cases such as Banco de Portugal v Waterlow & Sons. The book puts forward a proposal for the design and regulation of new payment systems and invites the reader to look beyond the dissemination of individual Distributed Ledger Technologies such as Bitcoin.

"Money is a legal institution with principal economic and sociological consequences. Money is a debt, because that is how it is conceptualised and comes into existence: as circulating credit - if viewed from the creditor's perspective - or, from the debtor's viewpoint, as debt. This book presents a legal theory of money, based on the concept of dematerialised property. It describes the money creation or money supply process for cash and for bank money, and looks at modern forms of money, such as cryptocurrencies. It also shows why mainstream economics presupposes, but avoids an analysis of, money by effectively eliminating money from the microeconomic market model and declaring it as merely a neutral medium of exchange and unit of account. The book explains that money rather brings about and influences substantially the exchange or transaction it is supposed to facilitate only as a neutral medium. As the most liquid of all assets, money enables financialisation, monetisation and commodification in the economy. The central role of the banks in the money creation process and in the economy, and their strengthened position after the bank rescue measures in the wake of the financial crisis 2008-9 are also discussed. Providing a rigorous analysis of the most salient legal issues regarding money, this book will appeal to legal theorists, economists, and anyone working in commercial or banking law"--

This book addresses 3 questions: is money a way to create a European Union identity? If so, which type of identity is this? And in what ways is the EU identity changing? The book brings together experts from a variety of backgrounds and academic approaches to analyse the law of money and payments on the one side, and the law of capital and investments on the other. The book is divided into 2 parts. Part I covers scriptural, electronic, and digital money. It analyses the European framework for payment services users, explores limits and challenges of the Banking Union, and looks at the project for a digital euro. Part II investigates the policy and regulatory drivers of the EU's changing identity, from the early modern roots of the European law of money and capital to the regulatory strategy set in the Capital Markets Union and the role conferred on venture capital; from the fintech-based developments of payment systems to the newly-established fiscal and monetary policies in the post-COVID phase. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy makers in the fields of law and regulation, as well as political economy and political sciences.

Socio-legal researchers increasingly recognise the need to employ a wide variety of methods in studying law and legal phenomena, and the need to be informed by an understanding of debates about theory and method in mainstream social science. The papers in this volume illustrate how a range of topics, including EU law, ombudsmen, judges, lawyers, Shariah Councils and the quality assurance industry can be researched from a socio-legal perspective. The objective of the collection is to show how different methods can be used in researching law and legal phenomena, how methodological issues and debates in sociology are relevant to the study of law, and the importance of the debate between "structural" and "action" traditions in researching law. It also approaches the methodological problem of how sociology of law can address the content of legal practice from a variety of perspectives and discusses the relationship between pure and applied research. The editors provide a critical introduction to each of the six sections, and a general introduction on law, sociology and method. The collection will provide an invaluable resource for socio-legal researchers, law school researchers and postgraduates.

This book addresses the different forms of austerity, contestation and resistance, in order to understand how they relate to one another and the impact they have on the democratic quality of public debates, the trust in public institutions and the legitimacy of law. Contestation of austerity includes not only traditional activism strategies such as human rights litigation and direct democracy instruments, but also new forms of collective action and collaborative resistance. Most importantly, many of the new anti-austerity initiatives also aim to renovate existing modes of democratic decision-making on the European, national, regional and local levels. The book focuses on different types of contesting austerity measures and the interaction between institutional and civil society actors. It will enhance understanding of how the various actors frame not only their goal but also the underlying social conflict to contest austerity and through which means they try to achieve political and legal changes. With 16 chapters written by contributors from Spain, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the UK, the book approaches 3 crucial areas of austerity policies: cuts in payment and pensions, labour law reform, and old and new poverty. In each field, the contributors analyse the processes of decision-making and contestation from 3 perspectives: institutions, democratic theory and societal responses.

The rise and spread of the Internet has accelerated the global flows of money, technology and information that are increasingly perceived as a challenge to the traditional regulatory powers of nation states and the effectiveness of their constitutions. The acceleration of these flows poses new legal and political problems to their regulation and control, as shown by recent conflicts between Google and the European Union (EU). This book investigates the transnational constitutional dimension of recent conflicts between Google and the EU in the areas of competition, taxation and human rights. More than a simple case study, it explores how the new conflicts originating from the worldwide expansion of the Internet economy are being dealt with by the institutional mechanisms available at the European level. The analysis of these conflicts exposes the tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, legal and political systems that are limited by territory, and, on the other hand, the inherently global functioning of the Internet. The EU’s promising initiatives to extend the protection of privacy in cyberspace set the stage for a broader dialogue on constitutional problems related to the enforcement of fundamental rights and the legitimate exercise of power that are common to different legal orders of world society. Nevertheless, the different ways of dealing with the competition and fiscal aspects of the conflicts with Google also indicate the same limits that are generally attributed to the very project of European integration, showing that the constitutionalization of the economy tends to outpace the constitutionalization of politics. Providing a detailed account of the unfolding of these conflicts, and their wider consequences to the future of the Internet, this book will appeal to scholars working in EU law, international law and constitutional law, as well as those in the fields of political science and sociology.

How should feminist theories conceive of the subject? What is it to be a legal person? What part does embodiment play in subjectivity? Can there be a conception of rights which does justice to the social contexts in which rights claims are embedded? Is the way the law constitutes legal subjects a form of violence? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary feminist theory,and in this collection they are addressed by a group of distinguished international scholars working in law, philosophy and politics. The volume, in which the concerns of one author are taken up by others, advances current debate on two interconnected levels. First, it contains original and ground-breaking discussions of the questions raised above. At the same time, it contains a more reflexive strand of argument about the intellectual resources available to feminist thinkers, and the advantages and dangers of borrowing from non-feminist traditions of thought. It thus provides an exceptionally rich examination of contemporary legal and political feminist theory.