We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2025
Is legal knowledge valuable? For businesspeople, legal knowledge has been an essential part of their craft for a very long time. The earliest known contract was written on a cuneiform tablet in 2750 BCE, where a farmer drafted into the military of King Sargon I contracted with another farm to grow and secure his crops in his absence in exchange for half of the grown produce. Contracts involving sales and purchases, rentals, labor contracts, co-partnerships and other agreements were used as early as 2000 BCE. Centuries later, the Roman Empire had formally trained legal experts who advised on legacies, guardianships, and contracts. In the modern era, prominent seventeenth-century merchant Gerard de Malynes noted that a businessperson was not a “compleat merchaunt” without knowledge of commercial law. Legal knowledge was so important to Joseph Wharton that, when he established the first collegiate school of business at the University of Pennsylvania in 1881, business law was one of five subjects he specified for the curriculum for what is today one of the most respected business schools in the world.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
