A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE CORE IDEAS OF SECURITY OVER TANGIBLE MOVABLES IN ENGLAND, FRANCE AND GERMANY

Abstract

This thesis seeks to contribute to the comparative history of security over tangible movables by tracing the development of various forms of security in the three principal European jurisdictions: England, France and Germany. Although secured transactions law has come to the forefront of research in the last two decades due to domestic reforms (such as in France and Scotland), reform proposals (such as in England and Wales) and the adoption of international instruments aiming at the harmonization or unification of the law (such as the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions), it has not yet received sufficient attention by the emerging discipline of comparative legal history. The existing comparative literature almost exclusively consists of collections of national reports providing only snapshots reflecting the current state of the law in a particular jurisdiction at a given moment in time. Collections of essays rarely contain contributions providing a historical perspective. There is also a noticeable lack of monographs on the history of security over tangible movables. Naturally, this thesis does not aim to provide a complete comparative history of security over tangible movables. It rather focuses on the core ideas in this compartment of secured transactions law: the availability of non-possessory security and the availability of present security over a shifting fund of present and future property. It explores how the different forms of security which came to be recognized in the three selected jurisdictions were (are) capable of accomodating these core ideas.