In retrospect of Hague convention on international sale of goods, the efforts had been poured in the initiative of UNCITRAL since 1968 triggering more welcome international treaty on the area of law. The efforts came to reality where the committee in action, comprised of 14 countries, concluded a final draft in 1978. In 1980, it was adopted as United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods(CISG). While the treaty is deemed a marvellous success within the purview (...) of uniform private laws, it is also true that there arises a severe criticism. One of criticism points to imprecise and ambiguous terms CISG employs that harms the uniformity in its interpretation. However, I would support the strength of CISG that CISG can be interpreted consistently in itself in terms of its international character, which means imprecision of CISG, short coverage of hardship issues, imbalance between parties, and inept nature to commodity transactions. In support of CISG, these criticisms either overlook the intrinsic difficulties underlying production of the uniform laws or seems to be groundless on various points of views. On the other hand, the true uniform laws presuppose uniformity in the application of treaty. We can see some extent of difference in terms of the role of precedents between the common law and civil law countries. It is encouraging that the recent practice of civil law countries, including Italy, Poland, Denmark and so on, tend to cite the foreign precedents for the cases of CISG laws. Within the regime of common law countries, the rule of “stare decisis” prescribes that the national precedents should govern as binding authority while those of other common law countries function to be a persuasive authority. This means that the practice of civil law countries has considerably developed as similar to that of common law counterparts. While they seem to use foreign precedents as persuasive authority like their counterparts, or in the least accept as inspirational authority, the application of CISG grows to be made in a shared fashion for true uniform laws. This development seems to prosper at the advent of academic database as well as the contribution of CISG experts. (shrink)

Termination in international contracts is considered a harsh sanction that harms international trade for each breach of contract or its provisions. The interest of international trade is fulfilled in maintaining and completing performance of contract, even if with a breach rectifiable by remedy. The termination destroys the contract and results in returning goods after their dispatch in addition to the accompanying new freight and insurance expenses and administrative and health procedures necessary for the entry and exit of goods and to (...) pay then refund the price. Moreover, the goods are exposed again to damage and perishing risks. Furthermore, the international sale contract is inherently associated with other international contracts such as goods transport contract, insurance contract and documentary credit through which the price is paid. If the sale contract is terminated, its effect will apply to all other associated contracts, if not performed, which produces many issues and hardships. (shrink)

The paper aims to briefly look into the civil law remedies of CISG from the perspective of economic efficiency. It mainly illustrates the basic tools of remedies in CISG, and discusses its strengths and flaws from the standpoint of economic deals normally present in most of commercial transactions. As many literature have long contributed to the legal economic discourse, our discussion, as a matter of course, largely depends on the current stronghold, or prospect that those theories espouse. Generally, (...) the remedies in CISG have two basic pathways addressing or penalizing the breach of contract from one party, namely specific performance and damages award. Other instruments to deal with the breach of contract cover a cure of defect, repudiation to perform a contract, additional period to perform a contractual duty, avoidance of contract and etc. This group of instruments can be classed as a privately administered remedies for our purpose of analysis. On this assumption, we can find many aspects of strengths in economic terms, but some paucity that the prescribed approach cannot properly address the best of economics between the contracting parties. This paucity comes mainly because the lawmakers normally could not pre-consider all circumstances among the individual contracting parties. For this reason, this paper argues in favor of privately administered remedies to fill the paucity of two typical remedies. Moreover, the contractual negotiation or design of contract is considered very important as the contracting parties are most informed about their best of economics besides the official lawmakers. The paper concludes with a short discussion of the electronic commerce in comparison with the traditional domestic and international commerce. (shrink)