Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG)

Transcription

1 Review of the Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods (CISG) Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) Bearbeitet von Patrick C Leyens, Florian Mohs, Peter Schlechtriem, John P McMahon, Jan Ramberg, Joseph Lookofsky, Pace International Law Review 1. Auflage Buch. VIII, 318 S. Hardcover ISBN Format (B x L): 16,5 x 24,5 cm Gewicht: 620 g Recht > Handelsrecht, Wirtschaftsrecht > Europäisches, internationales Wirtschaftsrecht Zu Inhaltsverzeichnis schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, ebooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte.

2 Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) edited by Pace International Law Review Sellier. European Law Publishers

3 ISBN ISBN Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar by Sellier. European Law Publishers GmbH, München. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gestaltung: Sandra Sellier, München. Herstellung: Karina Hack, München. Satz: Federer & Krauß GmbH, Augsburg. Druck und Bindung: Pustet, Regensburg. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany

4 CISG and Mistake: Uniform Law vs. Domestic Law The Interpretative Challenge of Mistake and the Validity Loophole Patrick C. Leyens * I. Introduction 4 II. The Doctrine of Mistake 10 A. The Conceptual Issues 11 B. The Search for an Internationalist Doctrine of Mistake 11 C. The Doctrine of Mistake under the UNIDROIT Principles 12 III. Mistake under the CISG 14 A. The Validity Exception The Interpretative Challenge Methods of Interpretation 17 B. The Drafting History of the CISG Introduction ULIS LUV Summary 26 C. The CISG s Autonomous Rules of Interpretation Domestic Law Approach Autonomous Interpretation Displacement Theory Balanced Approach 34 D. Conclusion 35 * LL.M. (University of London); Research Assistant, Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private and Private International Law, Hamburg, Germany; leyens@mpipriv-hh.mpg.de. This paper was awarded a third place in the Clive M. Schmitthoff Essay Competition 2002, an annual competition jointly announced by the Institute of International Commercial Law, Pace University School of Law and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London; // The paper has been slightly revised for publication. I would like to express my special thanks to Albert H. Kritzer, Michael Halberstam and Ross G. Anderson for their valuable comments. I am also indebted to Loukas A. Mistelis for valuable discussions and encouragement. Errors of fact or law are of course mine.

5 4 Patrick C. Leyens IV. Selected Types of Mistake 37 A. Mistake in Expression 37 B. Mistake in Motive Mistake in regard to the Identity of the Goods or the Other Party 38 a. Mistake in regard to the Identity of the Other Party 39 b. Mistake in regard to the Identity of the Goods Mistake in regard to the Existence of the Goods Mistake in regard the Quality of the Goods 43 a. Conflict Rule for the Parallel Applicability of Domestic and Uniform Remedies 44 b. Notice Period and Cut off Period of CISG article c. Summary Mistake in Regard to Characteristics of the Other Party 48 a. Remedies under the CISG 48 b. Conflict Rule for the Parallel Applicability of Domestic and Uniform Remedies 49 C. Summary 50 V. Conclusion 51 I. Introduction Scholars have enthusiastically proclaimed the success of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Vienna 1980 (CISG). 1 Some have gone so far as to divide the world of international trade into Vienna and Non-Vienna legal structures, speaking of a bifocal world 2 of international trade. 3 As of August 2003, 62 States have ratified the CISG 1 United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, April 11, 1980, S. Treaty Doc. No (1984), 1489 U.N.T.S. 3, reprinted in United Nations Conference on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 19 I.L.M. 668 (1980) [hereinafter CISG]. The text of the CISG is available in several languages at law.pace.edu and at The encomium that was lavished on the CISG ( quantum leap, new legal lingua franca, a milestone, a triumph of co-operative legal work, arguably the greatest legal a- chievement aimed at harmonizing private commercial law ) is summarized by Kevin Bell, The Sphere of Application of the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 8 Pace Int l L. Rev. 237 (1996), available at biblio/bell.html.

6 CISG and Mistake: Uniform Law vs. Domestic Law 5 including the United States and Germany. 4 The impressive development of the CISG has, at least for the time being, left behind the question whether harmonization of the law of contracts for the international sale of goods is politically desirable or economically useful. 5 2 Michael G. Bridge, The Bifocal World of International Sales: Vienna and Non-Vienna, in Making Commercial Law Essays in Honor of Roy Goode 277 (Ross Cranston, ed., 1997) [hereinafter Bifocal World]. 3 On current trends in international trade compare the contributions by scholars from all over the world to the three-day Clive M. Schmitthoff Symposium held in London, June 2000, reprinted in Foundations and Perspectives of International Trade Law (Ian Fletcher et al. eds., London 2001) [hereinafter Foundations]. See Commercial and Consumer Law National and International Law (Ross Cranston & Roy Goode, eds., Oxford 1993) [hereinafter Commercial and Consumer Law]; The Unification of International Commercial Law, Tilburg Lectures, (Franco Ferrari, ed., 1998); New Developments in International Commercial and Consumer Law, (Ziegel & Lerner eds., 1998) [hereinafter New Developments]. For earlier contributions see the Symposium, United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods,21Cornell Int l L. J. 419 (1988) and International Sale of Goods Dubrovnik Lectures (Peter ƒarčević & Paul Volken eds., Oceana Publications 1986) [hereinafter Dubrovnik Lectures]. 4 The United States in 1988; Germany in For the status of UNCITRAL Conventions and Model Laws, see Status on UNICTRAL Convention and Model Laws United Nations, available at (last visited Feb. 2, 2004). 5 On harmonization see Loukas Mistelis, Is Harmonisation a Necessary Evil, The Future of Harmonisation and New Sources of International Trade Law, in Foundations, supra note 3, at 3-42 (in particular para , at 12). For further critical remarks see Michael Joachim Bonell, Do We Need a Global Commercial Code?, 106 Dick. L. Rev. 87 (2001), available at (last visited Jan. 25, 2004) (He argues for an interplay between an integrated body of rules and more flexible instruments. Id. at 100); Roy Goode, Reflections on the Harmonisation of Commercial Law, in Commercial and Consumer Law, supra note 3, at 3 ( good conventions and bad conventions Id. at 25); Arthur Rosett, Unification, Harmonization, Restatement, Codification, and Reform in International Commercial Law, 40 Am.J.Comp.L.683, 687 (1992) ( limits of unification by codification ); Paul B. Stephan, The Futility of Unification and Harmonization in International Commercial Law, Working Paper No (June 1999) available at (last visited Feb. 2, 2004) (He makes the distinction between the issues of harmonization: Managing Legal Risk, Improving the Law, Developing intermediaries. Id. at 4. Stephan doubts that past unifications have improved the law. Id. at 39.).

7 6 Patrick C. Leyens According to Ernst Rabel, the grandfather of the CISG, the merits of an international uniform sales law must be measured by the extent to which it removes important contractual issues from the domestic and into the international realm. Rabel s monograph of 1936, Das Recht des Warenkaufs 6 [The law of the sale of goods], 7 is seen as the basis of today s CISG. Rabel was the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private and Private International Law in Hamburg, Germany. 8 One of his successors, Hein Kötz, questioned his ambitious claim as well as the enthusiasm on the part of some scholars about the ostensible success of the CISG and suggested that on closer inspection: The question appears justified (to ask) whether uniform law, in as far as it intends to simplify law, does not find itself in the position of Heracles who cut off Hydra s snake head only to be confronted with three new ones instead. 9 This statement indicates that the development of the CISG and the preservation of its internationalist goals is an important task for courts 10 and also for commentators 11 and scholars. 12 The doctrine of mistake is one of the issues Kötz may have had 6 Ernst Rabel, Das Recht des Warenkaufs, Vol I (1936), reprint 1957, Vol. II (1988). 7 Translation by the author. 8 The Max Planck Institute [hereinafter MPI] started work on April 1, 1926 in Berlin, Germany. Since 1956 it has been seated in Hamburg. See Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Private International Law, available at Prof. Rabel was director from 1926 to The statement is cited from Hein Kötz, Rechtsvereinheitlichung Nutzen, Kosten, Methoden, Ziele, 50 RabelsZ 1, 7 (1986). Prof. Kötz was director at the MPI from 1979 to For further critical remarks on harmonization by Prof. Kötz see the compilation by Ulrich Magnus, General Principles of UN-Sales Law, 3Int l Trade & Bus. L. Ann. 33 (1997) available at For example, The person looking at the currently effective Uniform Law from a certain distance will be surprised by its selective and fragmentary nature, and (i)ndeed it s a scary thought that the countless current undertakings of unifying and adjusting laws develop into completed texts and that the stream of these texts could then be directed to the already overburdened mills of national legislators. 10 Twenty Years of International Sales Law Under the CISG: the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods: International Bibliography and Case Law Digest ( ) (Will ed., The Hague 2000). 11 A Commentary on the Commentaries is provided by Albert Kritzer, Guide to Practical Applications of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, (1989) [hereinafter Practical Applications]. The leading commentaries are in English and German: In English: Commentary on the International Sales Law The 1980 Vienna Sales Convention (C. M. Bianca et al. eds., 1987) [hereinafter Bianca-Commentary]; Fritz

8 CISG and Mistake: Uniform Law vs. Domestic Law 7 in mind when making this statement. 13 It will be shown that a case of mistake reveals a number of uncertainties, ambiguities and irregularities of the CISG. 14 The CISG is silent on the question of mistake, but its article 4(a) excludes matters of the validity of the contract from its scope. Thus, the interpretative challenge is to Enderlein & Dietrich Maskow, International Sales Law (Oceana Publications 1992), available at John O. Honnold, Uniform Law for International Sales under the 1980 United Nations Convention (Kluwer Law Int l, 3d ed., 1999) [hereinafter Uniform Law]; John O. Honnold, Documentary History of the Uniform Law for International Sales (1989) [hereinafter Documentary History]; Commentary on the UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) (Peter Schlechtriem ed., Clarendon Press, 2d ed., 1998). In German: Rolf Herber & Beate Czerwenka, Internationales Kaufrecht (Beck 1991); Kommentar zum UN-Kaufrecht (Honsell ed., Springer 1997) [hereinafter Honsell-Kommentar]; Staudinger Kommentar zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch mit Einführungsgesetzen und Nebengesetzen: Wiener UN-Kaufrecht (CISG) (Martinek ed., Sellier/ de Gruyter 1999) [hereinafter Staudinger-Kommentar]; Kommentar zum Einheitlichen UN-Kaufrecht CISG (Peter Schlechtriem ed., Beck, 3d ed. 2000) (for a translation of the 2d ed. see supra this note) [hereinafter Schlechtriem-Kommentar]; Wolfgang Witz, Hanns-Christian Salger & Manuel Lorenz, International Einheitliches Kaufrecht Kommentar (Verlag Recht und Wirtschaft 2000) [hereinafter Kaufrecht]. 12 References to scholarly writings from all over the world are provided online by the Pace University School of Law, Institute of International Commercial Law, New York, available at For a selection in alphabetical order of countries see: Africa: South Africa (not contracting): Sieg Eiselen, Adoption of the Vienna Convention for the International Sale of Goods (the CISG) in South Africa, 116 S. Afr. L.J., Part II, 323 (1996), available at OHADA-States: Ulrich G. Schroeter, Das einheitliche Kaufrecht der afrikanischen OHADA-Staaten im Vergleich zum UN-Kaufrecht, Recht in Africa 163 (2001) (comparison to uniform sales law of the African OHADA-States). Austria: Martin Karollus, Judicial Interpretation and Application of the CISG in Germany , Cornell Rev. of the CISG 51 (1995), available at cisg/biblio/karollus.html. Germany: Peter Schlechtriem, Uniform Sales Law The Experience with Uniform Sales Laws in the Federal Republic of Germany, in Juridisk Tidskrift 1 ( ), available at [hereinafter The Experience]. Italy: Franco Ferrari, Applying the CISG in a Truly Uniform Manner: Tribunale di Vigevano, (Italy) 12 July 2000, Unif. L. Rev. 203 (2001), available at cisg/biblio/ferrari4.html [hereinafter Applying the CISG]. United Kingdom (not contracting) (All authors cited here with critical remarks on the reluctance of the United Kingdom in not ratifying the CISG): Bridge, Bifocal World, supra note 2, at ; Anette Gärtner, Britain and the CISG: The Case for Ratification A Comparative Analysis with Special Reference to German Law, Pace Rev. of the CISG 59