Statute-Merchant

Imprisonment for debt was a merchant-law innovation, unknown to the early common law

Examining the claim that imprisonment for debt was a law-merchant innovation, unknown to the common law — and that the Supreme Court in Sturges v. Crowninshield said so. The narrow truth holds: it was alien to the English common law, which imported it by statute in the 1280s. But it was no innovation — debt bondage is ancient and near-universal (Scripture, Rome) — the Sturges line is counsel's argument rather than the Court's, and the inference that modern incarceration is therefore commercial does not follow.