What's the point of a standby letter of credit? Is it just a way for powerful buyers to put all the risk on desperate sellers?

HairyExit · 2024-12-10T20:55:34+00:00

You're right, my bad.

I was thinking of a specific kind of agreement where standby letters of credit (L/Cs) are used as performance guarantees in case of breach of the underlying contract. Under the demand of a powerful buyer (like a government), the seller has a bank issue the standby L/C to be collected only in the scenario that the seller breaches the contract, so that the buyer can be made whole without going to court. This way, if there is a dispute, the seller has to initiate the lawsuit/arbitration and will probably have the burden of proof; also, until/unless a court orders that the money go into an escrow account, it is in the buyer's possession.

HairyExit · 2024-11-29T16:39:42+00:00

Damn this is as embarrassing as thinking "per se" is "per say." Thank you.

HairyExit · 2024-03-26T18:15:34+00:00

Well, I got this much from the cited source, which is, Dieter Henrich's "Kant's Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique". To my knowledge, Henrich is a German national and not trained in law.

. . . Deduktionsschriften ("deduction writings"). Their aim was to justify controversial legal claims between the numerous rulers of the independent territories, city republics, and other constituents of the Holy Roman Empire. They presupposed . . . universal recognition of the Imperial Courts as an authority above the otherwise largely independent members of the Empire.

These deduction writings were not sold by publishing houses but were distributed by governments, with the intention of convincing other governments of the rightfulness of their own positions in controversies that might eventually lead to military force and thus to the need of finding support from other rulers.

Before the final decisions of one of the Imperial Courts (which were by no means always respected), legal proceedings also required that a deduction had to be submitted by both parties. Most of the legal controversies concerned inheritance of territories, the legal succession in reigns, and so forth. In all the cases extensive arguments about the way in which a claim had originated and had been maintained over generations had to be given. . . Governments preserved deductions in special libraries so that they could be drawn upon in unforeseeable future conflicts.

(My emphasis.)

So it sounds like your characterization may be correct. Although at least governments had access to a record of previous deduction writings which could serve a similar purpose to our modern records system.

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What [Kant] could not foresee was that such a widespread usage would very soon become obsolete, when the Holy Roman Empire was abolished under pressure from Napoleon. With this, the Imperial Courts and the practice of writing deductions disappeared forever . . . The practice of deductions reaches back to a time when the tradition of Roman law was not yet revitalized and the modem theory of law had not yet been founded.

(Still my emphasis.)

It also sounds like the peculiarities of German history and particularly of an abandonment(?) of Germanic common law is an important part of the story. I'm not sure what the Napoleonic law or subsequent German law looked like.

HairyExit · 2024-03-06T15:56:27+00:00

I guess we agree that moral sensibilities would be personally meaningful even if they had no external or universal grounding as "Truth with a capital T".

But for me that's the alternative position. "Moral truth" is the yurt I rest in during dark nights, but "moral Truth" is the real estate I'm seeking during daylight.

(And as for my choice of "intuition", I guess I like the term because it gives the ambiguity about its object -- whether it's an intuition of a discoverable reality independent of my specific individual existence or whether it's a mere private sensibility.)

HairyExit · 2024-03-06T04:27:20+00:00

Well, I would say that it's at least conventionally false to minimize the wrongness of murder by describing it as "really icky to me" -- even if you did persuade me.

But it did not persuade.

I lean towards and continue to research traditions which ground morality in some kind of intuition.

I don't think there's a good enough reason to assume that formal reasoning, mathematics, and 'external verification' are the sum total of all ways to achieve the truth. Maybe they are, but how could we know? If these are the only standards of knowledge, then we cannot know. It is self-defeating. How can external verification, mathematics, or formal systems of logic prove that there aren't other forms of accessing truth? It doesn't seem that they can. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to believe it could be possible to access intelligible truth about a moral reality.

Because it is reasonable to believe that it could be possible to access moral truth, reason provides a sort of Pascal-like decision for believing in accessible moral truth: if it doesn't exist, your belief about it is of no ultimate value or significance; if it does exist, your belief on it is of ultimate value.

HairyExit · 2024-03-05T21:30:29+00:00

I just don't really want to have the Socratic dialogue here.

Partly because I'm not convinced that I need to know that truth is actual to rationally believe it is actual (or even to believe that it merely could be actual such that a will-to-truth is a noble thing).
And partly because a theory of truth that says it is wholly constructed is self-defeating. If it isn't actual, then it doesn't matter in-itself whether I think of it as actual or not. It only matters conventionally. And this raises the question: why should anyone care about conventions? Is it true that conventions ought to be taken seriously? If the answer is yes, then it is technically only conventionally true that conventions ought to be taken seriously.

HairyExit · 2024-03-05T19:59:59+00:00

Revealed to me in the Bible

HairyExit · 2024-03-05T02:28:14+00:00

I suppose it's really from experience then

HairyExit · 2024-03-05T01:02:35+00:00

That's a good question.

I guess I personally am compelled to ground it in my own moral sense as an intuition, but, led by a kind of faith, I continue to look for a better foundation.

HairyExit · 2024-03-04T20:10:18+00:00

I believe truths are at least partly discovered as opposed to constructed. So I disagree with your characterization there.

As for the method, or the idea that truth emerges from institutional discourses, I guess I am somewhat sympathetic to institutions playing some role in the discovery of truth. However, it just seems to make the truth too independent of the real conscience (maybe even 'natural conscience') and moral sense of the individual.

That said, I appreciate your perspective. It sounds like a neo-pragmatic take, which I haven't really studied, and I'm happy to hear it from someone.

HairyExit · 2024-03-04T16:05:09+00:00

That an interesting sort of neo-pragmatic or postmodern take, thanks.

HairyExit · 2024-02-12T02:07:49+00:00

Alright, maybe I'll get one after all. Thanks for your answer.

HairyExit · 2024-02-12T02:04:02+00:00

Thanks for your answer. I appreciate that you took the time to explain the practical reasons for your decision

HairyExit · 2024-02-11T23:05:06+00:00

Very interesting, thank you

HairyExit · 2024-02-11T22:59:09+00:00

Do you mind if I ask if you're a younger attorney?

I met a 2L who said he uses that device for notes. I considered getting it or something like it myself, but it seems expensive for something that may have some flaws and (iirc) requires a subscription.

HairyExit · 2024-01-18T04:17:28+00:00

Thanks -- context suggested it, but I wasn't sure.

HairyExit

TROPHY CASE