History of economic thought until the 20th century. In 1516 English humanist Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) published "Utopia", which describes an ideal society where land is owned in common and there is universal education and religious tolerance, inspiring the English Poor Laws (1587) and the communism-socialism movement. In 1517 Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published the first known argument for the quantity theory of money. In 1519 he also published the first known form of Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good". In 1568 Jean Bodin (1530–1596) of France published "Reply to Malestroit", containing the first known analysis of inflation, which he claimed was
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