Book Review: Cases on the Law of Negotiable Paper and Banking

In view of the excellent materials on the subject already on the market, a new casebook on negotiable paper needs particular justification. Professor Aigler meets this requirement by presenting a new approach to the field of bills and notes in his casebook on negotiable paper and banking. The intention of the book is certainly commendable. Since bills of exchange and promissory notes are devices to create, and checks devices to transfer, deposit currency, a course in bills and notes inevitably presents problems dealing with the banking law aspects of commercial paper. Many of the rules concerning negotiable paper, moreover, can be fully understood only if projected against the broad background of our banking system. The rules governing the formal aspects of bills of exchange, promissory notes and checks can, for example, be fully appreciated only when it is understood that the practices of banks which handle these instruments call for highly standardized contents. Professor Aigler\u27s combined treatment, therefore, of the law of negotiable paper and banking helps to impress the student with the fact that the field of bills and notes is not, as is commonly believed, a body of hypertechnical and complicated rules which exist in vacuo independent of reality, but is rather a code of business practices reflecting an important part of our economic life

Forged Indorsements

While the Anglo-American and the Continental legal systems have the same rules with respect to the effects of a forgery of the drawer\u27s signature, there is a striking difference between them in their attitude toward a forged indorsement. Under the Uniform Codes on Bills of Exchange and Checks, which were drafted in Geneva in 1931 and 1932 and have been adopted in most of the civil law countries, a holder acquiring an instrument in good faith and without gross negligence by an uninterrupted series of indorsements has good title even in a case where the instrument was lost or stolen and one of the signatures forged. As a corollary to this rule, the drawee is bound only to examine the external regularity of the chain of indorsements and is discharged if he pays in good faith to a holder who can establish his title by an uninterrupted series of indorsements. The Anglo-American law, on the other hand, provides generally that a forged signature in an indorsement is wholly inoperative, although the English Bills of Exchange Act makes an exception to this rule in favor of the drawee-banker in regard to checks and other demanddrafts

Book Review: Cases on Commercial and Investment Paper

We have recently become very critical of the traditional law school curriculum. We expect the author of a modem casebook not only to give us the cases and materials which make up his field, but also to provide justification for teaching the material covered in his casebook as a separate course. Such justification is supplied if the cases and other materials collected enable the student to understand and interpret sectors of social life in relation to legal institutions. A casebook on negotiable paper has to convince us that there is a stronger reason than tradition for giving a course on negotiable paper. The only good reason is that the material presents an adequate picture of the financial organization of our society. Measured by this test, the confines of the traditional course on negotiable paper become highly problematical. Since bills, notes and checks are today used as devices in transactions which create and transfer deposit currency, a good argument can be made for the plan to incorporate negotiable instruments in a larger course unit devoted to commercial bank credit. Underhill Moore\u27s promise to present us with a new casebook arranged according to this scheme, which stresses the significant fact that today the manufacture of credit lies in the hands of commercial banks, opens up a fascinating prospect

The American Securities Act and Its Foreign Counterparts: A Comparative Study

The likeness of parts of the Securities Act to the corresponding provisions of the British Companies Act of 1928-9 has caused many reviewers of the Securities Act to compare it, either incidentally or fully, with the cognate provisions of the English Act. A more comprehensive comparative study, including the most important Continental legal systems, has not yet been written. This article attempts that study

SOME ASPECTS OF PAYMENT BY NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

The scenes are laid in London, New York, Berlin, and Paris. The plot begins with a debtor\u27s giving his creditor a negotiable instrument in payment of the debt. Complications are introduced when the creditor fails to perfect his rights on the instrument, and yet, naturally enough, wishes to collect his debt. Initially both debtor and creditor are satisfied when the negotiable instrument is given in payment. If it is a time instrument, the debtor has obtained an extension of credit. The creditor, on the other hand, has placed his claim in liquid form; he may realize upon it by discounting the instrument. The Anglo-American, German, and French legal systems, in their own way, attempt to safeguard both the interests of the debtor and the creditor

Versuche über die Wirkung des Pepsins auf einige animalische und vegetabilische Nahrungsmittel : Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doctors der Medicin

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