Article by E. Allan Farnsworth
“These are better than my other meetings. Here we draft something.” So said René David, the eminent French comparatist, of UNIDROIT Working Group meetings three decades ago. Now, three decades later, after scores of such meetings to draft something, we have UNCITRAL's Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG or the Vienna Convention) and UNIDROIT's Principles of International Commercial Contracts (Principles).
As the United States delegate to UNCITRAL and a member of its Working Group on sales during the drafting of the Vienna Convention, and the American member of UNIDROIT's Governing Council and a participant in its Working Group on the Principles, I heartily endorse René's view of meetings that draft something. And I have been asked to say something about the influence of our two related domestic texts, the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, on those two international texts.
One of the delights of “meetings that draft something” is that the participants are free to borrow at will from other texts without fear of charges of plagiarism—a freedom usually accorded only to the likes of great artists and composers. Thus the Introduction to the UNIDROIT Principles states that “[f]or the most part [they] reflect concepts to be found in many, if not all, legal systems” and it unabashedly proclaims that, to the extent that the Principles “address issues also covered by CISG, they follow [with some adaptations] the solutions found in that Convention.” The Principles do this with nary a quotation mark, a footnote, nor a reporter's note. The same is true for the Vienna Convention.
About the Author
E. Allan Farnsworth. Alfred McCormack Professor of Law, Columbia University.
Citation
72 Tul. L. Rev. 1985 (1998)