The collective book Contractual Knowledge: One Hundred Years of Legal Experimentation in Global Markets, published as part of the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society and edited by Grégoire Mallard, Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development of the Graduate Institute, and Jérôme Sgard, extends the scholarship of law and globalisation in two important directions. This new addition to the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society first provides a unique genealogy of global economic governance by explaining the transition from English law to one where global exchanges are primarily governed by international, multilateral, and finally, transnational legal orders. Second, rather than focusing on macro-political organisations, like the League of Nations or the International Monetary Fund, the book examines elements of contracts, including how and by whom they were designed and exactly who (experts, courts, arbitrators and international organisations) interpreted, upheld and established the legal validity of these contracts. By exploring such micro-level aspects of market exchanges, this collection unveils the contractual knowledge that led to the globalisation of markets over the last century.
And as said by Joseph Nathan Cohen, from the City University of New York: “Assembling outstanding contributions from world-class scholars, Contractual Knowledge offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the chaotic history of the present international legal order,”