73. See Hardy, supra note 60, at 1020 (Law Merchant was "simply an enforceable set of customary practices that inured to the benefit of merchants, and that was reasonably uniform across all the jurisdictions involved in the [medieval] trade fairs"); Leon E. Trakman, the Law Merchant: The Evolution of Commercial Law 11-12 (1983) (Law Merchant was "a system of law that did . . . not rest exclusively on the institutions and local customs of any particular country, but consisted of certain principles of equity and usages of trade which general convenience and a common sense of justice have established to regulate the dealings of merchants and mariners in all the commercial countries of the civilized world"). Benson describes the development of the Law Merchant as follows:

"With the fall of the Roman Empire, commercial activities in Europe were almost nonexistent relative to what had occurred before and what would come after. Things began to change in the eleventh and twelfth centuries [with the] emergence of a class of professional merchants. There were significant barriers to overcome before substantial interregional and inter-national trade could develop, however. Merchants spoke different languages and had different cultural backgrounds. Beyond that, geographic distances frequently prevented direct communication, let alone the building of strong interpersonal bonds that would facilitate trust. Numerous middlemen were often required to bring about an exchange . . . . All of this, in the face of localized, often contradictory laws and business practices, produced hostility towards foreign commercial customs and led to mercantile confrontations. There was a clear need for Law as a language of interaction'."

Bruce L. Benson, The Spontaneous Evolution of Commercial Law, 55 Southern Econ. J. 644, 646-47 (1989). See also Perritt, supra note 10, at 46-49.