Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T18:27:48.092Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The role of transnational law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Giuditta Cordero-Moss
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Get access

Summary

Introduction

That international contracts are drafted without taking into consideration the requirements and assumptions of any particular contract law seems hard to reconcile with the necessity of interpreting and applying international contracts in accordance with a particular governing law. Taking contract practice as a starting point, the observer could be tempted to question how an international contract shall be subject to a law that was not considered during the drafting. Scholarly writings have been proposing a uniform international commercial law as a desirable alternative to the traditional system that sees international contracts subject to a national law chosen by the parties or selected on the basis of conflict rules.

This literature presents various arguments aimed at showing that national laws are not adequate sources for governing international contracts. Arguments range from the rather pragmatic (and irrefutable) observation that it is costly and time consuming to analyse, for every contract, all potentially applicable laws, to the not necessarily always appropriate statement that conflict rules are a confusing and complicated mechanism and thus should be avoided, or to the usually unsubstantiated statement that national laws’ content is adequate to regulate domestic but not international contracts. This latter argument seems to be less frequently invoked following the publication of principles and rules made specifically for international contracts (such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (UPICC) or the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL) described in Section 4.2). As these rules and principles – tailored to international contracts – show no structural differences from those of national laws, it is difficult to affirm that national laws are not adequate for governing international contracts.

Type
Chapter
Information
International Commercial Contracts
Applicable Sources and Enforceability
, pp. 27 - 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ICCA, Yearbook Commercial Arbitration XX (Kluwer International, 1995), pp. 41ff.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×