Section-5103
When There is No Money: The Monetary Foundation Examined
Beers's first treatise argues that paper currency cannot constitute 'money' because money requires intrinsic substance. The constitutional argument is foreclosed by the Legal Tender Cases (Knox v. Lee, Juilliard v. Greenman). The functional argument — that modern fiat currency operates more like debt than like money — has economic substance the Constitution does not engage. Two questions, two different answers.
Money, Credit, and Legal Tender
Three terms that the alternate-currency movement uses as if they were unsettled or interchangeable, but that have distinct operative legal meanings in modern American law. 'Money' under the Uniform Commercial Code is functionally defined as a medium of exchange currently authorized or adopted by a government. 'Credit' is a separate concept — a private-law obligation to pay, not a substitute for money. 'Legal tender' is the statutory designation by Congress at 31 U.S.C. § 5103 that specifies what may be tendered to discharge debts. The historical metallic-money definition is real legal history and still appears in some 19th-century legal dictionaries; it is not the operative modern definition.