A Comparative Analysis of the Drafting of European Private Law

The development of the 'Common Frame of Reference' is a highly prominent topic on the agenda of European integration. However, its underlying procedures have had only limited investigation. This article discusses the European private law project by inquiring into the drafting experiences of four other private law legislative processes, with a focus on sales law. These instruments concern Article 2 (on sales) of the American Uniform Commercial Code, the Vienna Sales Convention, the Dutch Civil Code and the Directive on Consumer Sales and Associated Guarantees. Ultimately, the article asks what can the European project learn from these experiences.     

国际货物贸易中卖方权利瑕疵担保责任之比较--兼评我国《合同法》的相关规定

在国际货物贸易中,对于卖方的权利瑕疵担保责任非常容易产生争议和纠纷,它关系到买卖双方权利义务的范围和双方的切身利益,是合同法律制度中一个值得密切关注的重要问题。《德国民法典》、美国《统一商法典》和《联合国国际货物销售合同公约》中关于卖方权利瑕疵担保责任规定,我国合同法应借鉴前三者的长处。     

论国际航空私法条约适用的强制性

条约的适用是国际法上一个重大的理论问题,也是国内法院在司法审判中必须面对的实践问题。1929年《华沙公约》建立了强制性适用原则,只要是公约定义的国际运输,必须适用公约。这一原则被其后包括1999年《蒙特利尔公约》在内的国际航空私法条约予以继承和保留,成为国际航空私法条约的鲜明特色。以《华沙公约》为代表的国际航空私法条约,其适用并未完全遵循国际法传统的条约适用理论,当事人国籍国是否批准条约并不是适用的前提条件,而是取决于航空运输合同所确定的始发地点和目的地点所在的国家是不是公约的缔约国或当事国,并以此为基础,建立起国际航空私法条约自身不同于其他国际法条约的适用理论和规则体系。"地点标准"是《华沙公约》适用的核心标准,其在一定程度上突破了条约适用的一般理论,是对条约适用一般理论的发展,是条约适用上的重要创新。司法实践中,应抛弃固有思维,从条约文本规定出发,才可避免法律适用上的错误。     

领土条约的界定标准、解释方法及其运行结构

领土主权属于一国的核心利益问题。国际法院基于《维也纳条约法公约》第31-32条之规定,在解决领土条约争端时采取了"实质优于形式"和"同意"等界定标准。同时,在适用该《公约》解释相关条款时采取了不同的解释方法,体现了一定的灵活性,但也出现过矛盾与反复。对此,应根据该《公约》第31-32条规定的内部要素及外部变量,优化领土条约的解释方法和运行结构。这种路径的设计不再拘泥于《条约法公约》本身,适当拓展、引入当事方提供的证明事实真相的关键证据,对领土条约的解释进行补充说明,并非游离于《条约法公约》之外,转而寻求保持占有法律、有效控制等法理基础及相应的事实主张和证据,而是将两者合而为一,以《条约法公约》解释规则为主,其他关键证据为辅的层级解释路径。另外,国际法院在解释相关领土条约时,除了适用"《条约法公约》+其他层级关键证据"模式外,还应借鉴学界的解释方法论,以使得两者交互影响,进一步完善条约解释方法的路径,实现对领土条约解释规则的再造。     

国际私法条约解释的路径依赖与方法展开

国际条约的文本制订及其为当事国接受仅实现了条约的形式统一,而条约的实质统一则需要通过一致解释和适用来达致。国际公法条约解释更多针对的是国家的权利和义务,而国际私法条约解释更多关涉的是私人的权利和义务,且没有相应的管辖国际私法条约的国际争议解决机构,故存在当事国解释的多样性风险。国际私法条约解释在路径上依赖条约解释的习惯法规则的同时,必须坚持自洽性和统一性解释要求。当事国在司法实践中对国际私法条约的解释,倾向于采用约文解释和目的解释方法,要求法官学会自我克制和比较借鉴,使用补充资料作为辅助手段,同时处理好多种约文文本和公共政策条款的解释问题。     

Moving Children through Private International Law: Institutions and the Enactment of Ethics

This article examines how the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co‐operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) plays a central role in justifying the institution of legal adoption. The Hague Adoption Convention has often been regarded as a response to the challenges that the “global situation” brings to adoption practice. Based on private international law, the agreement contains protocols and norms to ensure the protection of the child in intercountry adoption. In the article, I propose that the Hague Convention can be understood as a “transparency device”; a complex assemblage working in pursuit of global “good governance.” The device, however, also operates as justification within the institutional domain, allowing adoption agencies to make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate adoptions. Idemonstrate how the logic of transparency disguises as much as it promises to reveal. While the doctrine's aim is to validate adoptability and combat trafficking, it also helps to mainstream Euro‐American adoption knowledge to other parts of the world.     

The Climate Change Regime: An Enviro-Economic Problem and International Administrative Law in the Making

The climate change problem, or global warming, has gained a prominent place on the international political agenda, since the mid-1980s, when it first attracted political attention. The problem was initially perceived mainly as an environmental problem that could be resolved by technological solutions, its current perception, this essay argues, is best characterized as that of an enviro-economic problem. A perception that is exemplified by the ongoing negotiations for the development of economic mechanisms to tackle the problem. The climate change arena is a complex one, involving dichotomies between developed and developing countries, between fossil fuel producing and importing countries and between small island developing states and other states. This essay outlines the interests that play a role in the climate change negotiations and discusses the international climate change regime as contained in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. It concludes that the climate change negotiations are complicated by the fact that the negotiators, in addition to developing new substantive rules for a complex problem, are involved in developing new systemic rules for the international legal system. These new systemic rules have more in common with rules of national systems of public or administrative law than with traditional rules of international law, which have many similarities with national systems of contract law.     

The Hague judgments project: assessing its plausible benefits for the development of the Indian private international law

At present, India is not a signatory to any international treaty or Convention that regulates the disputes arising from the international jurisdiction of courts or the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in transnational civil or commercial matters. These aspects are, consequently, regulated by the country’s private international law as espoused via case-law, in the absence of any codification of the rules on the subject. This has, therefore, exposed the Indian legal system to the threat of being unpredictable, inconsistent or even obsolete in some respects as far as the governance of international civil and commercial disputes are concerned. The paper, accordingly, investigates the plausible role that the two instruments presently under the scope of the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s Judgment Project, namely, the Convention of 30 June 2005 on Choice of Court Agreements [the HCCA] and the recent Proposed Draft Text on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments [the Draft Convention], may have on the development of the Indian legal system. While the HCCA is already in force with three ratifications till date, the Draft Convention is merely in the form of a draft text that would hopefully see the light of the day, depending upon the consensus between the Members of the Hague Conference. Apropos, this paper identifies the loopholes in the relevant rules of the Indian private international law on the international jurisdiction of courts and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments and demonstrates the manner in which, these aspects may be addressed if the country endorses the two instruments under the Judgments Project.     

克制和应对“碎片化”:WTO协定与多边环境和人权协定规范整合的司法路径

WTO协定在应对环境贸易争端和人权贸易争端时的贸易价值优先取向加剧了国际法的"碎片化"和"不成体系"问题。为克制和应对国际法的"碎片化",促进WTO协定与多边环境和人权协定的规范整合,《维也纳条约法公约》第31(3)(c)条可作为整体解释方法的条约依据运用于WTO协定的司法解释中,但这需要专家组和上诉机构对条约"解释"和条约"适用"做出革新的认识,将整体解释方法作为自治的条约解释方法在人权和环境贸易争端中适用,而不是陷于第31(3)(c)条所述之当事国为"条约当事国"还是"争端当事国"之争。     

评《合同法》与《联合国货物销售合同公约》合同形式的冲突与协调

本文提出新《合同法》的买卖合同形式规定已经与《联合国货物销售合同公约》（ 以下简称《公约》） 的规定相吻合,因而,应撤销基于旧合同而对《联合国货物销售合同公约》声明保留的内容。此外,文章还对国内法与国际条约的四种关系模式及我国立法的取向进行了论述。     

Application of private international law conventions in hong kong of china

The conflict of laws of Hong Kong has predominately preserved traditional common law rules of pre-England conflict of laws. It is considered as the legal basis of the harmonization of law conflicts between different legal units, which mainly include three parts: jurisdiction, choice of law, judicial assistance in civil and commercial matters. As far as the legal source of the conflict of laws of Hong Kong is concerned, convention is an important part of international law sources. Currently, there are ten special conventions related to private international law, one of which is the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, and the other nine are the conventions consulted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (“HCCH”), including the Statute of the Hague Conference. Also, there exist non-special conventions relating to private international law, which play an important role in Hong Kong. These conventions have brought tremendous benefits to Hong Kong. More attention needs to be paid to the conventions of private international law to assist Hong Kong in cooperation with other more jurisdictions.     

《WTO协定》中“shall”和“should”词义实证研究

条约用语的意义模糊并非一个独立问题.通过对WTO案例的实证研究可知,“shall”与“should”在权威的公共英语词典和法律英语词典中都有多义性特征,由此导致成员方和争端解决机构对WTO诸协定中“shall”与“should”具有强制性抑或劝告性意义产生分歧,影响了WTO相关规则的法律确定性和可预见性.产生这种分歧的原因较为复杂,主要包括国际法本身的局限性、条约用语的含义可能会随上下文而变化、成员依据其利益对国际法规则作不断变化和不一致的解读、语言模糊性等.采用规范分析方法、语义分析方法、实证研究、系统分析等方法,可以根据《维也纳条约法公约》第31、32条规定的习惯法解释规则合理、准确地选择“shall”与“should”的恰当含义.二者既具有强制性含义又具有劝告性含义,如何在具体语境下确定其具体含义,尚未被不充分的条约实践和条约法规则所证实.     

Rethinking Jus Cogens After Germany v. Italy: Back to Article 53?

Netherlands International Law Review - Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties provides that a treaty is void if it conflicts with jus cogens. It is theoretically possible that...     

Oral International Agreement and China's Relevant Practice

Oral agreements still exist in international practice today.This paper first discusses the nature of agreements in oralform, then turns to introduce relevant practice of China. Theoretically,oral agreements should be regarded as a kind of treaty, althoughthese were not covered by the 1969 Vienna Convention on theLaw of Treaties. In practice, oral agreements were relativelyrare but still had their peculiar utility. The "Zhou Enlai–KosyginAgreement" was a typical example of oral agreement, which ishelpful for us both in observing oral agreements in practiceand in better understanding the Chinese practice of treaty-making.It shows that the choice of form of agreement depends not onlyon the rules of the law of treaties, but also on the circumstancesof conclusion and other factors.     

公私法协动视野下生态环境损害赔偿的理论构成

生态环境损害赔偿涉及私法与公法的协动。从比较法来看,私法在生态环境损害赔偿中的作用有两种解释路径:一是依托既有权利(如所有权、健康权等)受侵害,扩张损害概念,从责任范围层面涵盖生态利益;二是创设环境权或环境秩序权,从责任成立层面涵盖生态利益。两种进路的背后反映了对于公私法关系的不同认识,前者认为公法、私法并行救济,后者则认为私法救济优先。我国环境法学说传统上采第二种进路,而《生态环境损害赔偿制度改革方案》和“民法典草案”则有采扩张损害概念的整合进路的趋势。我国目前立法与司法实践仍存在体系上的龃龉。应当贯彻扩张损害的思路,在构成侵权的情况下,在责任范围中考虑生态利益。在不构成侵权的情况下,具体考量生态环境损害赔偿能否类推适用民法的规则。     

Choice of Law in International Child Support Obligations: Hague or Vague, and Does it Matter?- An American Perspective

This article explores, through American eyes, the choice oflaw rules associated with the child support aspects of the proposedHague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Supportand Other Forms of Family Maintenance. It considers the rolethese rules play in capturing the "construct" that is the "family"for the purposes of child support by implicitly determiningwho is an acceptable claimant and who is an appropriate obligor.In addition, the rules determine which jurisdiction's law willestablish the amount of support and thus, implicitly, they determinewhich jurisdiction sets the standards for family "performance".American constitutional law demands a connection between theindividual to be burdened and the jurisdiction imposing thatburden. The proposed rules seem designed to take this into account,but doing so requires the scheme to abandon a preference forrelying on the law of the creditor's habitual residence. Americanchild support proceedings use pre-established guidelines todetermine the amount of any child support award. These guidelines,which are premised on economic conditions in the individualstates, are not suited to dealing with international disputes.The cases suggest that American courts are reluctant to abandonthe efficiency of the guidelines in favor of detailed fact basedanalysis, even if the result is an "inappropriate" order –certainty comes at a price.     

Supply chains,contractual governance and certification regimes

Contractual governance of the food supply chain is on the rise. In this paper we focus on a particular set of instruments for transnational governance of food supply chains: transnational contracts and agreements. Looking at transnational contracts as instruments for implementation of transnational private regulation, we compare different mechanisms for the enforcement of safety and sustainability standards in global food supply chains. We conclude that the regime of contractual remedies follows different logics from the ones of regulatory and certification regime. (1) The former aims at redressing the victim of the breach inducing compliance through a re-active approach; whereas the latter pro-actively tries to restore compliance with regulatory process in order to pursue regulatory objectives. (2) The former focuses mainly on products, the latter on process. (3) The former concentrates on individual transactions while the latter focuses on the interdependence of contractual relationships along the chain and creates collective governance mechanisms. This paper suggests that the combination of the two sets of remedies may reinforce coordination and cooperation along the chain, therefore improving the level of quality, safety or sustainability of certified production. A higher level of awareness about the impact of standards and certification on the contract rules on remedies can have other positive consequences: it may improve contract drafting, leading the parties to coordinate different remedial systems when addressing the consequences of the breach and the ones of certification remedies; it may help courts to better define the scope and preconditions of contractual remedies and their effects on transnational regulation; it may guide law makers and standard setting institutions, when providing principles, rules or guidance concerning the consequences of the breach within contracts and along the chain, particularly in the food sector. From this perspective, the current work conducted by Unidroit and Fao for the production of a Legal Guide on contract farming could represent an important opportunity to define the links between multiple remedial regimes in food chains.     

Structuring Legal Institutions

The article is concerned with the question of how legal institutions are structured with the use of constitutive, institutive, consequential, and terminative rules. To that end, the regulation of international treaties as laid down in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969 is analysed. This leads to the discovery of two additional categories of rules: content rules and invalidating rules. Finally, the special status of unique legal institutions is investigated. Unique legal institutions – for example, heads of state, parliaments, and supreme courts – enjoy validity in a legal system to the exclusion of the validity of any other legal institution of the same category in that system.     

When Federal Law Goes Unnoticed: Assessing the CISG's Applicability Across U.S. Courts Based on an Empirical Research of Decisions from 1988 to 2020

The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has reached the level of acceptance that it can be recognized as the face of international sales law. Over a century ago, the late Roscoe Pound drew attention to the dichotomy between the law as written and the law as experienced in practice. The law of the CISG “on the books” is the law of the United States. With the growth of international trade, one might expect its importance to grow in the realm of law “in action.” This article explores the CISG in action in U.S. courts during its almost four decades of being the law on the books in the United States. To this end, the authors built an original dataset based on their Westlaw search of all decisions mentioning the CISG across all U.S. federal and state courts from 1988 (when the CISG entered into force) through 2019. The dataset provides unprecedented insights into: (1) how parties raise the issue of the applicability of the CISG, (2) how courts have ruled on the Convention's applicability, and (3) the provisions of the Convention that appear most frequently in these disputes. This article empirically assesses, through logistic regressions, which factors are statistically significant for predicting if a court will apply (or decline to apply) the Convention to a disputed transaction. Finally, the article highlights many ways in which the law in action may not be as robust or comprehensive as it appears on the books.     

The Proposed ‘Common European Sales Law’: Legal Framework and the Agreement of the Parties

The European Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (‘CESL’) seeks to create a European scheme of contract law available for parties to choose to govern cross‐border contracts for the sale of goods, supply of ‘digital content,’ and for the supply of related services. This article explains the background to the Proposal, sketches out the purposes and scope of the CESL, and considers and criticises its legal framework (and in particular its relationship with private international law) and the key requirement of the parties’ agreement. In the author's view, the CESL scheme remains an unconvincing basis for the achievement of its economic purposes and, as regards consumer contracts, puts too much reliance on the agreement of the consumer as a justification for the loss of their existing protection under EU private international law rules.