Book Description
The decision to write this book was taken in consideration of an unmet need of non-law students enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate courses addressing international contracts. In non-law faculties today there are more and more taught-in-English classes that deal with issues in connection with international contracts, and students may face serious difficulties in preparing for exams, mainly because of a lack of suitable handbooks in English taking into account their non-legal background. We have tried to attend to this unmet need by providing those students with a useful tool summarising basic principles applicable to international contracts. In doing so, we have thought it appropriate to try to strike the right balance between general notions (a theoretical approach), on the one hand, and contract templates and sample contractual clauses (business-case approach), on the other, in order to give them a view of how international contract law may affect international business practice. Throughout the process, we have relied on principles and notions resulting from international instruments (such as the Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts recently promulgated by the Hague Conference on Private International Law) and on contract templates drafted in private practice or made available to the public by international chambers of commerce or trade centres, which we acknowledge as our sources. Although this book is the result of a shared effort and the outcome of a joint project, chapters 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 were authored by Vincenzo Salvatore, whilst chapters 3, 4, 6 and 11 were written by Renzo Cavalieri. Each author remains individually responsible for any errors and inaccuracies contained in his respective chapters. We would like to thank Stefania Carrer, Alexia Ruvoletto and Wu Mengzhen for their assistance.
