Methodology of uniform contract law – the UNIDROIT principles as a source of law

Heidemann, M. (2007) Methodology of uniform contract law – the UNIDROIT principles as a source of law. European Business Law Review, 18(4), pp. 709-767.

Abstract

The remarkable pace at which the global exchange of goods, services and information develops, leads to new challenges for those who deal with contract law, both on a national and international level. More specifically, the law relating to commercial contracts is an area of growing interest. Both the formal, and the so-called ‘soft law’, legislation relating to cross-border trade have attracted great interest in the past ten years in legal scholarship and practice. This area of law has thereby become more accessible through the first publication the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (by the UNIDROIT Institute in Rome, 1994) and through other publications on the ‘New Lex Mercatoria’, which collectively provide lists and overviews of current laws and model laws and similar.2 The term which describes the thereby highlighted type of law is often ‘transnational’, or ‘a-national’, uniform contract law. The subject has also been successfully integrated into legal education, following recommendations by scholars at numerous international conferences throughout the last ten years. Despite this, the prevailing views of jurisprudence, judiciary and legislative organs in most European states do not agree with the underlying theories. Instead, national legislators tend to remain focused on internal markets and participants within the home territory. As a result, transnational uniform contract law is not used as widely as it could be, and this therefore, leads to a shortfall in the potential of international trade law as a whole.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Heidemann, Dr Maren
• Authors: Heidemann, M.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Law
• Journal Name: European Business Law Review
• ISSN: 0959-6941
• ISSN (Online): 1875-841X

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