Legal Artifacts – The Bill of Exchange

School of Accounting and Finance
Faculty of Business and Economics

and

School of Law
Faculty of Arts, Law and Education

Invite Staff and Students to Attend a Seminar

on “Legal Artifacts – The Bill of Exchange”

by Peter Fulcher
Senior Lecturer, USP School of Accounting and Finance

Abstract
Bills (of which the cheque is the most familiar example) and the related promissory note considerably pre-date plastic cards, bit coin and paisa. We read about bills and notes in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street. The modern law on these instruments is found in the Bills of Exchange Act, legislation passed by Parliament during its period of great enthusiasm for commercial legislation in the mid-19th century. That legislation put in written form rules developed by the courts over earlier centuries.

For something so old what can we say that is new? Likely little. Re the old and familiar more often it’s a matter of recovering what we once knew, seeing afresh that about which we have become blasé. In this presentation I want to look at bills (again) and focus on just what it is the law has accomplished with this instrument and why the bill and related note remain such important legal artifacts.

Date:   Thursday/15th August, 2013
Time:   2.00- 4.00pm
Venue:  FBE, Conference Room: IS33

Light refreshments will be served after the seminar
All are welcome

All queries to Monita Karan on karan_m(at)usp.ac.fj or 323-2571

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