Does the CISG Apply to Parties Based in Taiwan?
The complexity of Taiwan’s status under public international law may help to explain why there has been close to no discussion of its status under the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). This absence of discussion is surprising given Taiwan’s importance in international trade: Taiwan is among the ten leading trade…
Continue ReadingNew Empirical Study on CISG Litigation
There are a number of empirical studies about the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). A recent intervention by Carolina Arlota and Brian McCall, When Federal Law Goes Unnoticed: Assessing the CISG’s Applicability Across U.S. Courts Based on an Empirical Research of Decisions from 1988 to 2020, in the…
Continue ReadingOptionality in Choice of Law
Choice-of-law clauses are sometimes described as tools for reducing legal uncertainty. This characterization, while correct, is incomplete. In cases where the suit is brought in a jurisdiction other than the one named in the choice-of-law clause, it is sometimes more accurate to think of the clause as an option. Either litigant may, if it so…
Continue ReadingThe CISG and Choice-of-Law Clauses
Although the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has been in force for over 35 years, there is still scholarly disagreement as to how this treaty interacts with choice-of-law clauses (see, e.g., the discussion on this blog: Coyle, Brand and Flechtner, Hayward and Lal). In principle, there seems to…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach International Business Transactions
This post continues our series explaining how professors can use resources on TLB to teach various classes. This post discusses International Business Transactions (IBT). Although TLB focuses on litigation and IBT focuses on transactions, there is a great deal of overlap. The most obvious examples are contractual clauses that plan for dispute resolution, like forum…
Continue ReadingDrawing Inferences from CISG Opt-Outs
The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) both supply rules to govern contracts for the sale of goods. The UCC applies to purely domestic transactions. The CISG applies to many international transactions. When a contract involves the mixed sale of goods and services,…
Continue ReadingThe Homeward Trend in Chinese Choice-of-Law Cases
One of the characteristics of transnational litigation is that there is generally more than one forum in which the suit may be brought. Although TLB focuses primarily on transnational litigation in U.S. courts, it can sometimes be useful to look at what is going on in other systems where litigation might instead be filed. A…
Continue ReadingCISG Opt-Outs and Ascertaining Party Intent: A Back-to-Basics Perspective
Two of this year’s contributions to Transnational Litigation Blog have addressed the intellectually stimulating but also practically pressing issue of identifying when, and how, commercial parties can exclude the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods from their international sales agreements. In Professor John Coyle’s CISG Opt-Outs and Party Intent, Professor…
Continue ReadingRewarding Ignorance of the CISG: A Response to John Coyle
In a recent post, Professor John Coyle considers the interpretation of the following choice of law (“COL”) clause in an international contract for sale of goods where both parties are located in Contracting States to the U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG): “This Agreement shall be governed by the laws…
Continue ReadingCISG Opt-Outs and Party Intent
The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) is one of the most widely adopted commercial law treaties in the world. It functions as an “international” version of Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and, as such, provides the governing law for many cross-border agreements involving the sale…
Continue Reading