NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE

UNIVERSITY,
BHOPAL

INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW

Project on

The benefits of CISG: Reality or Illusion

Submitted by:
Sanchit Asthana
B.A.LL.B. 2011 87

Table of Contents
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE HARMONISATION OF INTERNATIONAL SALE LAW
III. WHO CAN THEN BENEFIT FROM THE CISG?
A) SCOPE OF THE HARMONISATION
B) QUALITY OF THE HARMONISATION
IV- CONCLUSION
V - BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. INTRODUCTION
Governments have conducted a process of harmonisation of international sale law for more
than 40 years.1 Legal scholars had advocated the idea since the 1920s. Today, international
sale law is harmonised to a very significant extent through the United Nations Convention on
Contracts for International Sale of Goods (CISG). This uniform law is applicable in 66 states,
which include most of the major trading nations 2. It governs many areas of sale law,
particularly in respect of the performance of the contract.3

Because the process of harmonisation has been supported for almost a century, and because
so many countries have adopted the CISG, it has become increasingly hard to challenge the
usefulness of the whole enterprise. Indeed, most modern treatises on international sale law
either state that the benefits of the harmonisation are obvious 4 or do not even find the issue
worth addressing.

Yet, some scholars have recently challenged the usefulness of the CISG. They have argued
that the poor quality of the harmonisation that it has achieved makes it doubtful that it has
been beneficial to commercial parties. However, none of these scholars have challenged the
usefulness of the process itself.
For a century, the supporters of international sale law have argued that an instrument such as
the CISG would have significant benefits for international sellers and buyers. The CISG has
been governing international sales for more than 15 years. It is now possible to review cases
in which the CISG was applied and to use these data to test the century old hypothesis of the
usefulness of harmonising sales law.

The first Hague Conventions on the sales of goods date back to 1964. See Schlechtriem, Commentary on the
UN Convention on International Sale of Goods, 1998, p. 1.
2
The United Kingdom and Japan are not parties. Yet, becoming so seems to be favoured by their legal elites and
thus only a matter of time : see M. Bridge, The UK Sales of Goods Act, the CISG and the Unidroit Principles, in
P. Sarvcevic & P Volken (ed), The International Sale of Goods Revisited, 2001, p. 116.
3
It does not govern the issues of the validity of the contract or of any of its clauses, nor the transfer of
ownership (CISG, article 4).
4
Bianca & Bonell, Commentary on the International Sales Law, 1987, p. 3.

This is to be examined whether harmonising international sale law has been a useful
enterprise from two perspectives. In part II, the arguments put forward by the supporters of
international sale law and explore whether they are convincing are listed. The conclusion
drawn is that most of them are not. In part III, the cases where the CISG was applied by U.S.,
German and French courts and by arbitral tribunals are examined. The vast majority of the
parties governed by CISG have not benefited from it, because they are not sophisticated
enough.

II. THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE

HARMONISATION OF INTERNATIONAL SALE LAW
The negotiators of the CISG thought that engaging in a process of unification of international
sale law would increase international trade. The preamble of the CISG provides that the
Convention wants to contribute to the removal of legal barriers in international trade and
promote the development of international trade. The negotiators of the CISG seem to have
considered that the CISG enterprise would increase international trade by facilitating the
conclusion of international sales. Indeed, legal scholars have essentially justified the
unification of international sale law since then by claiming that the CISG improves the legal
environment in which international sales are concluded by increasing legal certainty and
reducing transaction costs. Some scholars have also suggested that the CISG has been an
occasion for law reform.

III. WHO CAN THEN BENEFIT FROM THE CISG?

Two hypotheses in which international buyers and sellers may be able to benefit from the
CISG have been identified.
First, unsophisticated parties could benefit from the CISG ex post. They are not concerned ex
ante with the legal regime that will govern their transaction. In particular, they do not seek to
ensure that their contract will be enforceable. However, if an issue arises, they may then
wonder what the law is and seek legal advice. At that stage of the contracting process, they
may become concerned with the legal regime governing their contract. The CISG could thus
be beneficial if it could facilitate the resolution of the issue, which may later turn into a
dispute. That could be the case if it made the governing legal regime easier to determine or
clearer. The parties could then determine more easily or with more certainty what their rights
are under this legal regime and negotiate or litigate accordingly. In other words, the CISG
could increase legal certainty and decrease the litigation or pre-litigation costs of the parties.
Ex post, these claims would be much more convincing than ex ante. One reason is that,
because an issue would have arisen, the parties would care for the applicable legal regime and
would incur the costs of determining the applicable law. Another reason is that, because the
parties are unsophisticated, they would not have provided for the applicable law to the
contract ex ante. Thus, the alternative to the CISG would not be a choice of law providing
clearly for the applicable legal regime, but a default choice of law rule, which would typically
be rather unpredictable.
Second, some sophisticated parties incur higher transactions costs when contracting
internationally. That is the case for the parties who would not retain a lawyer for domestic
transactions, but would for international transactions. Harmonising international sale law
would allow them to avoid negotiating over the applicable legal regime and learning the
content of the applicable foreign law. It should therefore reduce their transaction costs.
Although these two groups of parties are different, they could benefit from the harmonisation
of the applicable law for the same reason. In an international context, the harmonisation of
the applicable law would make it much easier to determine the governing legal regime. It
would be common to both parties, and foreign to none. The parties could thus save the costs
of determining the governing legal regime and to learn it. This would save litigation costs to
unsophisticated parties, and transaction costs to sophisticated parties. However, it must be

emphasized these benefits would only be clearly beneficial if the harmonised legal regime is
of an equivalent quality of the national laws that would have been applicable in its absence.
Otherwise, the poor quality of the harmonised law could eventually make the parties worse
off than if a national law had been deemed applicable.
A) Scope of the harmonisation
The scope of the harmonisation achieved by the CISG is limited. It does not apply to the
validity of the contract or any of its clauses, or to the transfer of ownership. While a complete
harmonisation of the applicable law would clearly make it easier to determine the legal
regime governing the contract, it is unclear that a partial harmonisation is beneficial at all.
Indeed, the limited scope of the CISG has several consequences.
First, because the CISG does not govern issues of validity, it has no effect on the potential for
parties to shop for efficient mandatory rules.
Second, for those issues which are not governed by the unified law, it remains necessary to
determine which domestic law applies and, for one party at least, to learn it. In other words, a
partial harmonisation can only partially reduce the additional transaction or litigation costs
that international contracting entails. Such international sale law only reduces costs with
regard to those issues which are covered by the harmonisation, and does not prevent the
parties from having to determine and, for one them, learn the domestic applicable regime to
the outstanding issues.
It is important to note that it will not only be necessary to determine the domestic governing
law for those issues expressly not covered by the harmonisation. Because no final
interpretation of the provisions of the international sale law will be possible, each jurisdiction
may develop its own interpretation of its provisions. French domestic law refers to a
distinction (action for non conforming goods and action for goods containing a hidden defect)
which does not exist under the CISG. The applicability of two legal regimes therefore creates
a new legal problem which needs to be resolved. Determining the content of the rules
governing the contract therefore becomes more complex for parties willing to determine the
applicable legal regime. An additional transaction or litigation cost is thus incurred by the
parties. The limited scope of the harmonisation achieved by the CISG also limits its benefits
for international sellers and buyers. It reduces their transaction or litigation costs to a limited

extent only, and increases them. The CISG is therefore only beneficial if the reduction is
more important than the increase.
B) Quality of the harmonisation
Several legal scholars have challenged the quality of the harmonisation achieved by the
CISG. In particular, Gillette and Scott5 argue that the political economy of the convention
would lead its drafters to adopt rules which would be disfavoured by parties. Because the
drafters would have important incentives to reach an agreement when such agreement would
in fact be very difficult to reach, the rules that they would eventually adopt would be the
result of important compromises and would try to accommodate as many drafters as possible.
Hence, the rules would be vaguer and would rely more heavily on standards which could be
read differently depending on the background of the reader. Gillette and Scott underline that
the CISG relies indeed heavily on standards, which seems to show that they were right.
If these scholars are right that the convention provides a significantly worse legal regime than
domestic laws, two consequences may follow. First, sophisticated parties may opt out from
the convention as a whole or from some of its provisions, as the convention allows them to.
That is the conclusion that Gillette and Scott reach: they argue that vague rules being
unhelpful to parties because they provide no actual guidance and allow moral hazard, parties
will disfavour the rules of the CISG and want to opt out from them. Far from reducing the
transaction costs of the parties, the convention would actually increase them. Second, many
inefficient rules would still remain applicable. Unsophisticated parties would. But it is
important to realise that sophisticated parties may not find worth incurring these additional
costs if the probability of the contingency is too low. They would therefore opt out from some
of the disfavoured rules and leave some others applicable because the costs of opting out
from them would be too high. Even worse, unsophisticated parties would not opt out from
any of the inefficient rules, because they would only care for the governing legal regime ex
post. The second consequence of the poor quality of the harmonisation would therefore be to
increase the number of inefficient rules governing the contract. It is hard to find data either
confirming or contradicting the theory of Gillette and Scott. Cases are generally unhelpful,
because the vast majority of them concern unsophisticated parties which are barely aware of
the relevance of the law governing their contract. Yet, a few of the sophisticated parties who
provided for the applicable law went on to exclude the CISG86. Some other anecdotal
5

Clayton P. Gillette & Robert E. Scott, The Political Economy of International Sales Law, forthcoming, INT.L
R. LAW AND ECONOMICS.

evidence can be gathered. Corporations see no advantage in the application of the CISG, and
were not of the opinion that the CISG was legally advantageous over domestic laws. The only
thing that one can learn from these examples of exclusion of the CISG is that no case or
contract seems to have been reported of a partial exclusion of the convention. In all these
examples, the convention was excluded as a whole. This shows either that the CISG is not
trusted as a whole, or that a sufficient number of its provisions have been judged badly by
parties to exclude the whole regime. This further shows that the fear that parties may exclude
some of its rules only and leave some others applicable despite their poor quality is for the
time being probably theoretical. If it could be shown that the CISG provides for more
disfavoured rules than the domestic law that can be practically chosen by the parties, its
applicability could force the parties to further negotiate in order to opt out from it in more
instances than they would have had a domestic law been applicable. The cost of the
comparison of the CISG with other potentially applicable regimes would thus both be
incurred more often and be higher than if the CISG had not been applicable.

V. CONCLUSION
Has the CISG been useful to commercial parties? The answer is no for the vast majority of
them, and that it has been at best of a very limited use for the others. The question therefore
arises whether the enterprise should have been pursued in the first place. There are two
possible answers to this question.
The first is that it should not have been pursued, because it has been costly for the society
without being helpful to many private actors, if any. Indeed, it has been costly for the society
not only because it was necessary to negotiate it, but also because it has increased the
complexity of the law of the contracting states and put an extra burden on their judges who
must apply alternatively or mix several legal regimes.
The second answer is that the flaws of the CISG will maybe disappear one day. It may have
been a first step towards a complete harmonisation. This complete harmonisation could not
be achieved immediately, but no doubt will be one day. The quality of the harmonisation will
also improve. But to reach that point, a first step had to be taken, and that was the CISG.
Retrospectively, the CISG will appear as a transition towards a better world.
However, it should not be forgotten that most of international sellers and buyers being
unsophisticated legally speaking, they may only benefit from any harmonisation of sale law
ex post if an issue or a dispute arises. If one adds the small number of potential beneficiaries
with the costs of pursuing the enterprise for the society, it may be that a wise conclusion
would be to direct such efforts to an industry which is more likely to benefit from them.

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