On the home court advantage. Participation of locals and non-residents in a village law court in sixteenth-century Holland

Abstract

Rural law courts are sometimes believed to have contributed to juridical fragmentation, which led to coordination failures and, hence, to high transaction costs. We present a case study of the village law court of Mijnsheerenland, and pay particular attention to the question of whether non-residents expected villagers to have a ‘home court’ advantage. Our analysis of default risk premiums demanded by participants in various exchanges does not indicate this was the case. We argue that this was caused by one of the peculiarities of the juridical system of Holland, which was fragmented but nevertheless uniform because of the dominance of public courts under central control of the ruler.

The Financial Power of the Powerless: Socio‐Economic Status and Interest Rates Under Partial Rule of Law

“…() observe that creditors had numerous means of recourse when a loan went bad, and that a fairly advanced loan registry supported legal enforcement. Zuijderduijn () adds that locals and outsiders were equally likely to use village courts and that they obtained credit at similar rates; evidently, these courts did not favour locals. Under the circumstances, the personal characteristics of borrowers hardly mattered to interest rates; rates for men did not differ significantly from those for women, nor the rates of wealthy borrowers from those of the poor .…”

“…Like pre-modern France, late-medieval Netherlands lacked formal banking. Yet, Dutch property rights were stronger and better protected than those of other late-medieval polities (Zuijderduijn, 2009(Zuijderduijn, , 2014. van Zanden et al (2012) observe that creditors had numerous means of recourse when a loan went bad, and that a fairly advanced loan registry supported legal enforcement.…”

The Financial Power of the Powerless: Socio-Economic Status and Interest Rates Under Partial Rule of Law

“…Yet, Dutch property rights were stronger and better protected than those of other latemedieval polities (Zuijderduijn 2009(Zuijderduijn , 2014. Van Zanden, Zuijderduijn, and de Moor (2012) observe that creditors had numerous means of recourse when a loan went bad, and that a fairly advanced loan registry supported legal enforcement.…”

“…Van Zanden, Zuijderduijn, and de Moor (2012) observe that creditors had numerous means of recourse when a loan went bad, and that a fairly advanced loan registry supported legal enforcement. Zuijderduijn (2014) adds that locals and 54 Where intermediaries were not used, credit remained relatively personal.…”

Introduction: law courts, contracts and rural society in Europe, 1200–1600

“…12 Furthermore, in his discussion in this issue of the contracting institutions provided by the village law courts of fifteenthand sixteenth-century Holland, Jaco Zuijderduijn divides the broad category of registration into two distinct elements: ratification and registration proper. 13 Ratification was the procedure by which the court's judges established the validity of an agreement and its conformity with local law. Registration was the process of writing down a ratified agreement, but before the mid-sixteenth century not all such agreements were registered.…”