Interpretation and Gap Filling in International Commercial Contracts


Book Description

This is an overview of interpretation and gap filling mechanisms in international commercial contracts covering CISG, UNIDROIT Principles, PECL and DCFR.




Contract Interpretation and Gap Filling


Book Description

What happens when contracting parties do not expressly provide for a particular situation in their agreement? Is intervention by the courts or legislature to fill gaps in contracts justified? How should those gaps be filled? This book is unique in the way it combines comparative and theoretical perspectives to provide answers to these questions. From a comparative law perspective, relatively little attention has been given to the different interpretative and gap filling techniques available in different legal systems. A comparison of the approach to contract interpretation and gap filling in England, Germany and the Netherlands is therefore provided in this book. Comparative observations are also made in light of the CISG, PECL and the Unidroit Principles for International Commercial Contracts. This book also contains a theoretical component that draws insights and inspiration from autonomy-based theories of contract, law and economics, notions of fairness and socio-legal perspectives to establish why contracting parties leave gaps in their contracts, whether intervention is justified and, if so, how gaps in contracts should be filled. The final part of this book builds on the comparative and theoretical perspectives to develop an interpretative and gap filling strategy that combines responses from contracting parties, the contracting community, the legislature and the courts.




Interpretation and Gap Filling in International Commercial Contracts


Book Description

With the growth of cross-border business, the rather important but complex and controversial topic of interpretation and gap filling in international commercial contracts receives more and more attention. International legal instruments such as CISG, UNIDROIT Principles, PECL and DCFR provide rules in order to interpret international commercial contracts in a uniform way. However, while these instruments may bring together already existing national concepts, they must of course be understood beyond the domestic concepts and approaches as such. This book is an autonomous comparison across the above-mentioned international legal instruments, with a focus on the rules on interpretation and gap filling that provides the necessary theoretical background and case law to understand the rules in practice. Interpretation and Gap Filling in International Commercial Contracts examines the uniform and harmonised set of rules in their own right; without comparison to national laws, but in their own unique setting of international commercial contracts. It is a practical user guide for both scholars and practitioners. Dr Ayse Nihan Karadayi is a postdoctoral researcher on international contract law at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.




Letter of Intent in International Contracting


Book Description

Letter of Intent in International Contracting provides readers with a unique point of reference on the legal effects of a letter of intent-the document frequently used in international transactions. Firstly, the book takes a fresh look at trade usages in negotiations of international contracts. It integrates the view of negotiations as strategies and tactics (well-known in business, but largely disregarded by the law) with the legal analysis. Secondly, it discusses in turn those provisions frequently used in a letter of intent and comments on them based on thorough comparative research of four jurisdictions: the Netherlands, France, England and Wales, and the United States. The discussion of French law is based on the recent reform of the French law of obligations which significantly modified the French Civil Code in 2016. At the international level, the study addresses the 1980 Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods and international soft law: UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2010, Principles of European Contract Law, and the Draft Common Frame of Reference. This book is a result of doctoral research conducted at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. It will be relevant to legal practitioners working in the field of international contracts, as well as to scholars and policy makers concerned with harmonization of law based on non-binding principles and business practices. Dissertation. (Series: Ius Commune Europaeum, Vol. 156) Subject: International Law, Contract Law]




Contract Interpretation in Investment Treaty Arbitration


Book Description

"As the book clearly explains, there are situations in which questions of contract law need to be examined by investment tribunals - mainly as preliminary or incidental questions, to determine issues such as contract liability or breach of contract, that in turn are assumed as a basis for the issues of investment law in dispute"--




The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods


Book Description

Serving the needs of both students and experts, this book evaluates the CISG through economic theory and legal doctrine.




An International Approach to the Interpretation of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (1980) as Uniform Sales Law


Book Description

In 1980, the United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) came into being as an attempt to create a uniform commercial sales law. This book, first published in 2007, compares two major restatements - the UNIDROIT Principles and the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL) - with CISG articles. This work has gathered scholars and legal practitioners from twenty countries who contribute analysis on the various issues covered in the articles of the CISG comparing them with how the issue is treated in the UNIDROIT and PECL restatements.The introductory section of the book addresses theoretical and practical issues of the appropriate interpretive methodology as mandated in CISG Article 7 and it is followed by individual analyses of the Convention's provisions.




CISG Methodology


Book Description

The CISG is now being applied extensively both by international arbitral tribunals and by domestic courts of its more than 70 contracting states. But do they also apply it in the same manner? Although Article 7 of the CISG underscores "the need to promote uniformity in its application", it gives little guidance as to how to achieve this goal. Each judge and arbitrator is influenced by the legal methodology of his home jurisdiction. Therefore it is somewhat of a paradox that whilst the number of contracting states is constantly increasing so too is the threat of variation in application. In this book the most important issues of the CISG's methodology are analysed by leading experts from five continents. Whereas some authors provide a thorough analysis of the central topics of interpretation, others enter almost uncharted territories.




An International Restatement of Contract Law: The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts


Book Description

The Unidroit Principles of International Contracts, first published in 1994, have met with extraordinary success in the legal and business community worldwide. Prepared by a group of eminent experts from all major legal systems of the world, they provide a comprehensive set of rules for international commercial contracts. This new edition of An International Restatement of Contract Law is the first comprehensive introduction to the Unidroit Principles 2004. In addition, it provides an extensive survey and analysis of the actual use of the Unidroit Principles in practice with special emphasis on the different ways in which they have been interpreted and applied by the courts and arbitral tribunals in the hundred or so cases reported worldwide. The book also contains the full text of the Preamble and the 180 articles of the Unidroit Principles 2004 in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Russian as well as the 1994 edition in Spanish.




Contract Law and Contract Practice


Book Description

An oft-repeated assertion within contract law scholarship and cases is that a good contract law (or a good commercial contract law) will meet the needs and expectations of commercial contractors. Despite the prevalence of this statement, relatively little attention has been paid to why this should be the aim of contract law, how these 'commercial expectations' are identified and given substance, and what precise legal techniques might be adopted by courts to support the practices and expectations of business people. This book explores these neglected issues within contract law. It examines the idea of commercial expectation, identifying what expectations commercial contractors may have about the law and their business relationships (using empirical studies of contracting behaviour), and assesses the extent to which current contract law reflects these expectations. It considers whether supporting commercial expectations is a justifiable aim of the law according to three well-established theoretical approaches to contractual obligations: rights-based explanations, efficiency-based (or economic) explanations and the relational contract critique of the classical law. It explores the specific challenges presented to contract law by modern commercial relationships and the ways in which the general rules of contract law could be designed and applied in order to meet these challenges. Ultimately the book seeks to move contract law beyond a simple dichotomy between contextualist and formalist legal reasoning, to a more nuanced and responsive legal approach to the regulation of commercial agreements.