The long, salty arm of the law: Colonial Connecticut's litigated maritime economy and the origins of modern contracts
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[1] Missouri Western State University
Missouri Western State University
Township of Washington, Estados Unidos
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- Localización: International journal of maritime history, ISSN 0843-8714, Vol. 33, Nº. 4, 2021, págs. 690-706
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
This article examines maritime trade litigation tied to a typical New England jurisdiction – New London County, Connecticut – to reveal two important eighteenth-century trends. First, decision-makers prioritized honouring contract promises – a critical shift from earlier Puritan ideals that privileged fairness in agreements. This transition was essential to developing what became the will theory of contract, in which promise and performance replaced equity as the measures of valid agreements. This shift appeared in Connecticut nearly a century before scholars have suggested it did in the United States. The second trend involves litigants’ choice of court. Despite the availability of several tribunals for pursuing maritime-based legal actions, parties regularly chose the county court to resolve their issues. In an expanding and increasingly impersonal Atlantic marketplace, parties preferred the flexible and familiar proceedings of the local court because judges and jurors treated mariners as if they carried Connecticut's legal protections with them on their distant travels.
