The Legal Environment of International Finance: Thinking About Fundamentals

The huge increase in cross border capital flows over the last two decades has profoundly important implications for society in general and the law in particular. These flows give rise to a set of legal problems that are sufficiently distinct and coherent to constitute a legal field of their own. Confirming this observation is the development of a specialized legal practice whose members spend the bulk of their time working on such transactions. Nevertheless, a law school course in international finance is a rarity, even at the schools that train most of the students who ultimately join this practice. The arrival of the first casebook in the area is thus a signal event, particularly so because of its high quality. International Finance: Transactions, Policy, and Regulation is bound to encourage the offering of courses in the area and influence in their content. In doing so, the book is likely to affect how lawyers practice and hence the development of the law itself. Its publication thus invites an attempt to identify the fundamental features of international finance as a subject of legal inquiry