International Trade Law - page 2
Keywords: The Vienna Convention
By Nanssi on 17/11/2009
Level: Bachelor Honours Degree (BA, BEng, BSc etc)
Page Number: 2 of 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
United States.
Given that those conventions were ratified by a small number of countries led in 1966 to the establishment of a new body, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), which was given the task to draft an international treaty for the sale of goods, bearing in mind the different legal, social and economic systems.
This time, not only civil law but also common law was well represented by the participation of a large number of countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States. This led finally in 1978 to the adoption of the Draft Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), often referred to as the Vienna Sales Convention, which came into force on 1 January 1988.
2.2. Aim and Contents
The CISG offers a uniform international sales law on which contracting parties and courts may rely. It provides harmonization and clarifies rules which in national laws are undeveloped, unclear or even unsuited to cross-border trading. It is often used as a gap-filler to deal with cases where the parties do not select the applicable law and thus conclude their agreement informally. Given its flexibility in allowing Contracting States the option of excluding all or part of its articles, have made the CISG the most successful international document so far in unified international sales law.
The Convention contains 101 articles which deal with the contractual aspects of sale, such as the formation of the contract, the rights and obligations of seller and buyer, the time when risk in goods passes from seller to buyer, the duty on parties to preserve goods and remedies for breach of contract. However, it is important to bear in mind that the CISG is not concerned with the validity of the contract, neither with the effect which the contract may have on the property in the goods sold. Nevertheless it has become the central reference point for other private law harmonizing instruments.
2.3. Ratification
According to UNCITRAL, 70 countries have already signed the Convention representing two-third of all world trade, whereas the United Kingdom known as a leading jurisdiction for the choice of law in international transactions has not yet ratified it.
2.4. Sphere of application
The Convention applies, according to article 1(1), to contracts of sale of goods in two different situations. The first is when the contract is between parties whose places of business are in different Contracting
Last 5 comments…
There have been no comments posted for this article, but you need to register if you want to be the first!