COMMERCIAL LAW. A phrase employed to denote those branches of the law which relate to the rights of property and rela tions of persons engaged in commerce.
This term denotes more than the phrase "mari time law," which is sometimes used as synonymous, but which more strictly relates to shipping and its incidents.
As the subjects with which commercial law, even as administered in any one country, has to deal are dispersed throughout the globe, it results that com mercial law is less local and more cosmopolitan in its character than any other great branch of mu nicipal law ; and the peculiar genius of the common law, in adapting recognized principles of right to new and ever-varying combinations of facts, has here found a field where its excellence has been most clearly shown. The various systems of com mercial law have been well contrasted by Leone Levi In his collection entitled "Commercial Law, its Principles and Administration, or the Mercan tile Law of Great Britain compared with the Codes and Laws of Commerce of all the Important Mer cantile Countries of the Modern World, and with the Institutes of Justinian ;" London, 1850-52 ; a work of great interest both as a contribution to the project of a mercantile code and as a manual of present use.
As to the rule in the federal courts, see Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. (U. S.) 1, 10 L. Ed. 865; Carpenter v. Ins. Co., 16 Pet. (U. S.) 511, 10 L Ed. 1044; Burgess v. Seligman, 107 U. S. 33, 2 Sup. Ct. 10, 27 L. Ed. 359, where Bradley, J., says, "Where the law has not been settled, it is the right and duty of the federal courts to exercise their own judgment, as they also always do in refer ence to the doctrines of commercial law." See UNITED STATES COURTS.