Research Handbook on International Commercial Contracts (Andrew Hutchison and Franziska Myburgh (eds), Edward Elgar 2020)

The recently published Research Handbook on International Commercial Contracts (Andrew Hutchison and Franziska Myburgh (eds), Edward Elgar 2020) includes a chapter by Jeffrey Thomson in which he sketches a history of the law of marine and commercial insurance contracts in England. The varying fortunes of ‘private ordering’ — the extent to which London’s merchant-insurers created, adjudicated upon and enforced their own rules — serves as the study’s main guiding thread.

In this article, Jeffrey outlines the main topics covered in the chapter, and comments further on the extent to which private ordering remains an important feature of the current London insurance market (eg in relation to topical issues like the Covid-19 pandemic and the market’s exposure to cyber risks).