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The Files and Exhibits of the Imperial Chamber Court and Aulic Council As Sources of Commercial Law

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The Files and Exhibits of the Imperial Chamber Court and Aulic Council As Sources of Commercial Law chapter 9 The Files and Exhibits of the Imperial Chamber Court and Aulic Council as Sources of Commercial Law Anja Amend-Traut 1 Introduction As part of the general project ‘The Making of Commercial Law’ this chapter describes a significant phenomenon of the common practice: how commercial law came into existence in the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern period. Only occasionally and in specific fields such as the law on bills of ex- change we can find legal rules that were passed following the formal legislative procedure. But mainly, commercial law was developed in alternative ways – through the daily practice of the merchants as consuetude, or as the products of judicial work. Court documents are a worthwhile topic for spotting those forms and manifestations of commercial law as complementary sources, and are therefore an important component of the key concern upon which this book aims to elaborate. The two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the Imperial Chamber Court (Reichskammergericht) and the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat), were at work altogether for more than three hundred years. However, to answer the question of to what extent their work can be consid- ered as a source of commercial law, or more precisely to what extent their work produced sources of commercial law, the following distinctions need to be made. The Imperial Chamber Court was installed in 1495 to ensure the ‘Eternal Public Peace’ (Ewiger Landfrieden) as part of the Imperial Reform adopted at the Imperial Diet at Worms in 1495 under the Emperor Maximilian i, and acted exclusively as a judicial body.1 The Aulic Council, newly instituted in Vienna on the basis of the regulations of Maximilian i’s court of 14972 and in contrast * A German-language version with slight modifications is published in ZNR 37 (2015), 177–205. 1 Strictly speaking, the court was merely reformed, given that the Chamber Court was its fore- runner. Still a fundamental work on the institution of the Imperial Chamber Court, see R udolf Smend, Das Reichskammergericht, 1. Teil: Geschichte und Verfassung (Weimar: Böhlau, 1911), 3. 2 Printed with remarks in Thomas Fellner and Heinrich Kretschmayr, (eds.), Die Öster- reichische Zentralverwaltung. i. Abt. Von Maximilian i. bis zur Vereinigung der österreichischen © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004363�44_0�0 <UN> 186 Amend-Traut to the Imperial Chamber Court, was solely dependent upon the Emperor both with regard to its location and its members, and he did not merely act as a chief justice, but also as head of the Empire and a supreme feudal lord. Thus, is was not only a supreme court, but it also acted as a legislator, an imperial fief authority, and as an advisory body for legal cases involving political fac- tors.3 Therefore, the files and exhibits examined here affect two spheres of le- gal sources, namely court rulings and legislation. This chapter then deals with sources as produced by or before the two courts, but not with historical sourc- es or legal sources as such. Owing to their different functionality, the sources produced insofar also reveal different states of aggregation of commercial law, which shall hereinafter be investigated. 2 The Term Commercial Law At first, a dividing line needs to be drawn to determine to what extent the files of the Imperial Chamber Court and those of the Aulic Council can be referred to at all as sources of commercial law. For this purpose, the literature on the laws of merchants emerging since the sixteenth century is essentially not followed, because it limited their explanations to the area of private merchant law – to individual discourses4 or comprehensive works5 on laws relating to bills of ex- change, insurance or bankruptcy. Rather, the following expositions are based on the broader concept of ius singulare mercatorum as first introduced by Jo- hann Marquard in his dissertation published in 16366 and which – since the 1920s denominated as economic law7 – also covers public law regulations, inter und böhmischen Hofkanzlei (1749), 2nd volume of records 1491–1681 (Wien: Holzhausen, 1907), No. 4, 6–16. Online http://www.literature.at/viewer.alo?objid=19475&viewmode=fullscreen& rotate=&scale=5&page=1 (last visited on January 6, 2018). 3 For an introduction to the institution, see Oswald von Gschließer, Der Reichshofrat. Bedeu- tung und Verfassung, Schicksal und Besetzung einer obersten Reichsbehörde von 1559–1806 (1942; repr. Nendeln: Kraus-Reprint, 1970). 4 Matthias Bode, Dissertatio Juridica de cambiis, …(Marburg: Chemlin, 1646); Wolfgang Adam Lauterbach, De jure in Curia Mercatorum usitato (Tübingen, 1655). Further evidence on the law on bills of exchange can be found in Anja Amend-Traut, Wechselverbindlichkeiten vor dem Reichskammergericht: Praktiziertes Zivilrecht in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2009). 5 Sigismund Scaccha, Tractatus de commerciis et cambio (Rome: Brugiottus, 1619); Benvenuto Straccha, Tractatus de maercatura seu mercatore (Lyon, 1558). 6 Johann Marquard, Dissertatio politico-historico-iuridica de jure mercatorum singulari … sub praesidio … Petri Theodorici (Jena, 1636). 7 In this regard see Heinz Mohnhaupt, Justus Wilhelm Hedemann und die Entwicklung der Disziplin ‘Wirtschaftsrecht’, znr 25 (2003), 238–268, 243–247. <UN>.
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