Book Review: Cases on the Law of Negotiable Paper and Banking

Abstract

In view of the excellent materials on the subject already on the market, a new casebook on negotiable paper needs particular justification. Professor Aigler meets this requirement by presenting a new approach to the field of bills and notes in his casebook on negotiable paper and banking. The intention of the book is certainly commendable. Since bills of exchange and promissory notes are devices to create, and checks devices to transfer, deposit currency, a course in bills and notes inevitably presents problems dealing with the banking law aspects of commercial paper. Many of the rules concerning negotiable paper, moreover, can be fully understood only if projected against the broad background of our banking system. The rules governing the formal aspects of bills of exchange, promissory notes and checks can, for example, be fully appreciated only when it is understood that the practices of banks which handle these instruments call for highly standardized contents. Professor Aigler's combined treatment, therefore, of the law of negotiable paper and banking helps to impress the student with the fact that the field of bills and notes is not, as is commonly believed, a body of hypertechnical and complicated rules which exist in vacuo independent of reality, but is rather a code of business practices reflecting an important part of our economic life.