Bulletin des arrêts du Tribunal de cassation, 1889

The Bulletin des arrêts is the published record of the Tribunal de cassation, Haiti's court of final appeal. Each volume prints the rulings in full, each headed by the point of law decided, which makes the series usable: a reader can see how the court read a code article before reading the reasoning.

The first ruling in the civil section turns on the false interpretation of a contract and on the meaning of the words piastres and gourdes, which is the monetary question of the period reaching the court as a matter of contract construction.

A court deciding what a money term in a contract means is doing exchange-rate policy at retail. Haiti ran a dual reckoning in gourdes and in hard currency through this whole period, and the volumes of the 1900s record the legislature issuing nickel and paper against it; this ruling is the other side of that, a party trying to be paid in the better money.

Contract enforcement, the execution of judgments and the settlement of property claims are the constraints every business-climate diagnostic of Haiti names, and this series is the primary record of how the highest court actually decided them.