Uniform Law for International Sales Under the 1980 United Nations Convention

Now ratified by 73 countries from every geographical region, representing every stage of economic development and every major legal and economic system, the United Nations Convention on Contracts of the International Sales of Goods (CISG) has changed the way international sales contracts are drafted and resulting disputes settled. In the decade since the Third Edition of Professor John Honnold’s classic commentary, there has been vast growth in the number of decisions from tribunals around the world which have applied the CISG, an explosion of new scholarly analyses of the Convention, and remarkable developments in the research infrastructure that permits access to those materials. These developments have raised many new issues, and have deepened our understanding of (or, in some instances, effectively resolved) old ones. The remarkable progress of this epoch-making uniform international law calls for an updated edition of Professor Honnold’s treatise.

This Fourth Edition retains the original’s incisive article-by-article commentary, as well as its insistence on how the parties’ duties and the corresponding remedies need to work together (‘like scissor-blades,’ to quote Professor Honnold’s vivid simile) and the many concrete examples that illustrate and test the Convention’s response to problems that arise in international trade. It deals definitively with the crucial aspects of sales contracts, including the following, taking fully into account the myriad variations among distinct legal systems:

• delivery of the goods and handing over of documents;
• conformity of the goods and third party claims;
• remedies for breach of contract by the seller;
• payment of the price;
• taking delivery;
• remedies for breach of contract by the buyer;
• anticipatory breach and instalment contracts;
• damages;
• interest;
• exemptions;
• effects of avoidance; and
• preservation of the goods
• conclusion ( formation) of contracts.

In explicit recognition of Professor Honnold’s unique understanding of the Convention’s development and the issues that occupied those who drafted and finalized the text, the substantial new textual material incorporated into this new edition is set in bold italics, allowing the reader to distinguish the work of the editor from text preserved from earlier editions, and thus identifying the material that carries Professor Honnold’s special authority.

Over three decades Professor Honnold’s almost intuitive grasp of the instrument has guided governments, tribunals, scholars and practitioners towards an enlightened international understanding of the treaty. This new edition provides tribunals, practitioners, and scholars with even more invaluable insights into the meaning of each article of the Convention. The hundreds of decisions cited, many of them dating from the last few years, will continue to influence the promotion of international sales contract uniformity, encourage the settlement of disputes, and help to reinforce consensus in the application of the Convention.