The Policy Implications of Neutral Scholarship: A Case Study of Electronic Funds Transfer and the Baxter, Cootner and Scott Report

Abstract

EFTS-Electronic Funds Transfer systems-are a major evolutionary leap in the development of the nation's payment processes. Their introduction, already well underway, has raised and will continue to raise a wide array of serious, even novel, questions for the legal order. Some of the issues are technical, going to such problems as how electronic transfers can approximate the documenting function of hard-copy checks and drafts, or to how the existing allocation of payments risks can be retained with the new technology and the opportunities it will create for losses, thefts, and abuse. These problems are difficult, interesting, and among the kinds that academic legal research calls its own. EFTS also raises issues that are explicitly policy-oriented or value-focused. Legal scholarship has traditionally embraced these issues as well.