Legal History of Money

The legal history of money is not a well-defined field with a canon and an accepted set of questions and conflicts. This review muses about the possible reasons for the late development of the field and then reviews three areas of scholarship in which a legal history of money is emerging: international political economy, studies of banking and central banking, and the constitutional approach to money. The constitutional approach brings together the best insights from the other two approaches and thematizes the mutual constitution of political and economic categories through money. The review closes by suggesting that the future of the legal history of money lies in development of the constitutional approach.