Politics of justice/Politics of trade: foreign merchants and the administration of justice from the records of Venice’s Giudici del Forestier

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to present and describe one of the oldest courts of law of the Republic of Venice, the Giudici del Forestier, and to contextualise it within the Venetian judicial system, and other Italian and European courts which had civil jurisdiction over foreigners during the middle ages and the early modern period. The essay argues that in Venice there was a complex interplay between the politics of justice and the politics of trade, which was embodied by the granting of summary procedure as a ‘privilege’ to encourage the presence of selected groups of foreign economic operators. This argument is developed by elaborating on the three major issues (foreigners, summary procedure and mercantile law) that are intertwined in its documentary material. The essay shall also discuss the origins and success of summary procedure and the frequent overlap between the categories of «merchant» and «foreigner».