Learning from Our History:

Evaluating the Modern Housing Finance Market in Light of Ancient Principles of Justice

Author: Professor Brian M. McCall
Published: 60 S.C. L. Rev. 707 (2009)
Professor McCall’s Article focuses on the problems initiated in the home mortgage finance market, arguing that at a major reason for the current “financial winter” is that the market for buying housing has been systemically violating core principles of justice. He suggests two aspects of natural law economic theory that should be used to evaluate the home finance market developed in the Twentieth Century – usury theory and just price requirements. By examining these two core economic concepts which dominated the Western intellectual tradition for over a millennium, McCall concludes that a system which generates profits for those providing the money to buy housing violates these tenets of the natural law. The Article suggests that, although not the only cause of all the aspects of the current crisis, these unjust exchange transactions have initiated a systemic breakdown in the home mortgage market.