Anyone who wishes to study or work with the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), will find that there are a number of difficulties in trying to understand its application, interpretation and case law. This is mainly due to the fact that it represents a unique form of uniform commercial law, which ideally relies on a form of scholarly and jurisprudential comity to apply it in a uniform manner, something which some scholars of the CISG have labelled a jurisconsultorium.
Main reading on the CISG, in the form of some of the major handbooks or commentaries, does not always alleviate this problem or shed much light on it. This is understandable, as main commentaries have much material to cover and cannot afford the luxury of focussing on these aspects. And that is precisely why this is a very useful book to accompany main reading on the CISG.
The CISG is a multi-national instrument, currently representing three-quarters of the world's trade, with the UK being the sole industrialized country not to have ratified it following recent steps by Japan to embrace it. It is a substantial if not an accessible instrument, in terms of understanding, and so a companion book like this one is a welcome sight.
The book is based on an article from 2004 which was very well received in CISG circles when it was published (printed in 34 Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business, Winter 2004, 299–440 and available at www.cisg.law.pace.edu). The article has, for the past four years, been a significant contribution to analysing CISG cases and understanding uniform application, and the book has the benefit of printing material which has already been accepted and cited by the vast majority of CISG scholars. The book has revised certain sections of the original article and included some material found elsewhere, and it has the added benefit over the article of being able to reproduce very useful appendixes for authorities, cases and the CISG and its status, making it a much more accessible companion for CISG research, but is in essence a reproduction of the article. As a prominent CISG figure phrased it, when this reviewer asked him his thoughts on the book: “I loved the article – of course I like the book”.
The book is primarily aimed at practitioners and scholars who study and use the CISG. But it is of interest to another group as well. The development of certain areas of commercial law into a field of transgovernmentalism, of sharing laws and using foreign laws in domestic courts merely because these uniform laws are shared, is a development which causes understandable interest in circles of comparative law. This book is a very good example of such development, and the way in which the shared law of the CISG is analysed and viewed will be of interest to anyone studying the globalization of private law in a comparative context.
Aside from the sections introducing the CISG and its methodology, and the summary of observations at the end, there are six main topics in the book, logically structured around relevant topics: Formation (Chapters 3 & 4), Obligations of the Buyer (Chapter 5), Obligations of the Seller (Chapter 6), Common Obligations of the Buyer and Seller (Chapter 7), Breaches (Chapters 8 & 9), and Damages, Excuse and Preservation (Chapter 10). Each of these sections contains a highly detailed analysis of the available CISG jurisprudence, analysed from a very helpful methodological view of the CISG as a shared law. It is a very good companion book to CISG reading, and will help to illustrate much regarding the international CISG jurisprudence.
Although the price is a bit steep in relation to the length, it can be hoped that a paperback version will reduce this, because having this information in book form, with the appendices to help navigate it, makes it a very good reference work for CISG research.
