A person with no or limited knowledge of the law may be forgiven for assuming that it is a complete system, assembled by informed and wise people, and that, subject to an otherwise overriding rule, the underlying common law provides a set of principles and rules that can be applied to any situation and should therefore be complied with by those affected by it. Up to a point. Unfortunately, there is no uniformly Herculean body of law-makers and declarers that can know and anticipate every situation and how it should be dealt with, or how this may be done in circumstances that come to light in the future, which of course in a broad sense includes all cases. The law, as we know it, does not provide an understanding of or a perfect solution to all problems in life, not even specifically legal problems. But that does not reduce it to a mere aspect of the study of social behaviour. It provides a framework in which we can all interact with a reasonable amount of confidence of what is and is not permissible, a value of which merchants and commercial lawyers are famously aware in their desire for certainty and predictability. Yet it is also certainly not the whole picture. We need to know how and why the law is as it is today, and how it may adapt to future circumstances.

In the present book, guidance is offered by an author who—as someone who has been a member of the bar, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and most importantly a scholar—is perhaps uniquely qualified to draw and comment on the sources that have made our commercial law. And, of course, there is an extremely wide range of them. There are more than enough to support a doctrinal history of commercial law. However, that has not been the author’s aim, though there are instances where this is the focus (eg, in relation to sales law). Nor is it a study of everything that could be said to come within the description commercial law (a continually elusive umbrella term anyway). On the whole, though with the notable exception of agency, its concern is not with the law applicable to actors in commercial law (whether corporate or otherwise) but with their activities, ie, how they arrange for and carry out transactions.

The author reduces a wealth of both primary and secondary material to six chapters. The first introduces the commercial and legal contexts with which the enquiry is concerned. The second is devoted to the commodity markets of London and Liverpool. The third grapples with the variety of intermediaries who have made the system work. Chapter 4 deals with the conventionally accepted core material of commercial law, namely sale, hire