Merchant Law

Conclusions on Gorean Merchant Law: A Common Code in a Divided World

Merchant Law stands as the only common body of law generally respected and held in common across the often-hostile and disunited Gorean municipalities. Primarily established and codified at the great Sardar Fairs, it serves to facilitate commerce and regulate property, especially the transfer and status of slaves.

I. Nature and Scope of Merchant Law

1. Inter-Municipal Agreement: Merchant Law is a joint legal agreement between the various Merchant Castes of different cities, creating a "commercial world" that links disparate communities. It is promulgated and revised at the Sardar Fairs, particularly En'kara.

2. Facilitates Commerce: Its primary purpose is to permit commerce to exist much more easily by providing shared rules, thus enabling extensive trade routes and the functioning of commercial facilities (e.g., money changing, banking, letters of credit at fairs).

3. Limited Jurisdiction: Despite its commonality, Merchant Law does not cover all aspects of commerce and has "gaps" that efforts are made to close. Its jurisdiction is often "theoretical preeminence" in inter-municipal matters and can be "overruled whenever found by cities or individuals distasteful or inconvenient."

4. Enforcement Reliance: While cities "will, within their own walls, enforce the Merchant Law when pertinent," its enforcement outside city walls often depends on the "swords of a given polity." It is noted to be "ineffective" in enforcement, "lacking a means of enforcement."

II. Merchant Law's Focus on Property (Especially Slaves)

1. Commodity Standardization: Merchant Law provides criteria for the standardization of the female slave as a commodity, defining how she is "figured as an item of tribute" in relation to other domestic animals (like verr and tarsks).

2. Branding and Collaring:

   • Recommendation: Merchant Law explicitly recommends and often requires slaves to be both branded and collared. It prescribes common branding sites (e.g., high on the left thigh) and defines collars as "identificatory purposes."

   • Purpose: This serves practical considerations like identification of property, securing it against loss, and facilitating recovery. It makes the slave's "status, condition, and nature made clear, fixedly and absolutely."

   • Visual Manifestation: The collar, in particular, is prescribed to be a "lovely, indicatory, uncompromising, irremovable, possessive encirclement," making bondage "public and obvious," and enhancing beauty "aesthetically and symbolically."

3. Claimancy & Ownership Transfer:

   • Unclaimed Slaves: An unclaimed slave, legally subject to claimancy, can be claimed and becomes the property of the claimant.

   • Lost/Runaway Slaves: If a slave is lost, washed overboard, or is a fugitive whose owner is unknown, they are "subject to claim."

   • "Effective Possession" is Crucial: Merchant Law regards "effective, or active, possession as crucial" for legal title, especially for slaves and other chattels like kaiila or tarsks. Title can pass to a new owner if the original owner doesn't recover the slave within a specified time (e.g., one week).

   • Transfer of Claims: Instruments of debt can be transferred, allowing transferees to collect on them.

   • No Freeing by Third Parties: One man cannot free the slave of another; if a slave flees and is apprehended by guardsmen, that doesn't make her the guardsmen's slave.

   • Context of Capture: Merchant Law clarifies "capture rights" related to property acquisition, including slaves captured in fallen cities, who briefly become the property of their rescuers (who are not obligated to free them).

4. Slave Conduct & Status:

   • A slave must serve anyone who possesses her, even a thief or captor. If she flees a captor after he has consolidated his hold, she can be counted as a "runaway slave" from him. This is to keep slaves in perfect custody and encourage boldness in men.

   • A slave's body is "public" property ("as much as that of a tarsk or kaiila").

   • Earth women, lacking a Home Stone, are implicitly subject to Merchant Law regarding enslavement.

   • The institution of female slavery is "sanctioned in both custom and law" across Gor.

5. Fraud Prevention: Provides redress against fraud in commercial situations (e.g., misrepresenting hair color of a slave, falsifying pedigree papers on slaves).

III. Limitations and Other Legal Concepts

1. No Intellectual Property: Merchant Law has been unsuccessful in introducing concepts like patents and copyrights on a global scale, unlike some local municipal laws.

2. Caste Recognition: It is unclear if Merchant Law dictates that the Slaver's Caste is a sub-caste of Merchants, or if Slavers' preference to be an independent caste is recognized.

3. Financial Regulations: Standardizes Weights and Measures ("The Weight and the Stone") throughout Gorean cities. Penalizes those using deceptive measures.

4. Overlapping Laws: Conflicts can arise between Merchant Law and city-specific laws or caste codes, and "cities and men do much as they please" sometimes, often overriding Merchant Law if it's inconvenient.

In conclusion, Merchant Law is a pivotal, pan-Gorean legal framework driven by the Merchant Caste's economic interests. Its primary function is to standardize and legitimize the acquisition, ownership, and sale of property across cities, with a particularly strong emphasis on the absolute commodification and transfer of slaves, treating them as chattels. However, its authority remains subject to the more stringent and localized enforcement powers of individual city laws.

- Kati Evans