Thomas Gresham own house in Bishopsgate Street and the rents from the Royal Exchange should be vested in the Corporation of London and the Mercers Company, for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven professors should read lectures, one each day of the week, in astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric and music. Thus, Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597. Gresham's Law (stated simply as: "Bad money drives out good") takes its name from him (although others, including the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, had recognised the concept for years) because he
Hard cases make bad law received special attention as the recipient of more care. The legal scholar Arthur Linton Corbin, writing in 1923, reversed the adage in an article entitled "Hard Cases Make Good Law": Hard cases make bad law Hard cases make bad law is an adage or legal maxim. The phrase means that an extreme case is a poor basis for a general law that would cover a wider range of less extreme cases. In other words, a general law is better drafted for the average circumstance as this will be more common. The original meaning of the phrase concerned cases in which