What is Mercantile Law?

Mercantile law is an assemblage of customs and practices governing a broad range of business practices at the local, country, and international levels. In general, mercantile law sets forth the rights, responsibilities, and liabilities of the parties involved in business events. Among other areas, mercantile law addresses contracts, copyrights, franchising, insurance, licensing, patents, and the transport of goods. In short, mercantile law involves all aspects of buying and selling between parties, and so knowledge of it is a requirement for those designing business contracts.

Mercantile law is designed to provide guidelines for how to deal with each of the preceding types of business transactions. It also provides for considerable standardization of the legal underpinnings of business transactions, which is useful for establishing consistency in how legal disputes are resolved. With a high level of consistency in case resolution, the parties to a dispute have a reasonable expectation regarding how the dispute will be settled.

Mercantile law is formulated at the country level, so there can be significant differences between their laws. This typically requires a business dealing with international transactions to obtain legal advice in the countries where it is conducting operations, in order to deal with other parties in those countries appropriately.

Mercantile law was created in Europe to deal with interactions between merchants, and continues to change over time due to legislative changes, case law, and long-term trends in usage.