Source: http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/cisg/biblio/kritzer4.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 16:56:59+00:00

Document:
1.	An Introduction to "Dragon Taming"
1. AN INTRODUCTION TO "DRAGON TAMING"
"Taming the Dragons of Uniform Law" (title purloined from a scholar who coined it in another context) is a report on sharings of judicial reasoning in 225 English texts and English translations of court decisions and arbitral awards on the UN Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods (CISG). Our "dragon taming" paper is also an overture. We invite colleagues to co-venture with us; to serve our profession and the world community by collaborating on case translations.
A major help scholars can provide is by analysing the cases of their countries and of other countries "as thoroughly as possible to present the full picture of interpretations and applications to our jurists."
In collaboration with persons of many countries, we work to tame Ferrari's "dragons"; to help scholars implement Schlechtriem's counsel.
English translations of rulings on the CISG by courts of Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Switzerland, including rulings of the Supreme Courts of Argentina, Austria, Colombia, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, and of arbitral interpretations of the CISG handed down by ICC tribunals and tribunals of Austria, China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.
"We are told that there have been no decisions so far in other countries on this Article of the convention ... So where we lead, others may follow. But I would like to assure them that if it had come first before them, we would be only too glad to follow them."
Compatible views have been expressed by scholars of Latin American, Scandinavian, United States and German legal cultures, and by other jurists. Representatives of many legal cultures favor consideration of decisions of courts of sister signatories. High courts, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, urge us to give "considerable weight" to such decisions.
"Courts ... have to develop their jurisprudence in company with the courts of other countries ..."
"obliged to search for and take into consideration foreign judgments ... at least the judgments from other Contracting States, when he is faced with a problem of interpretation of an international convention."
"the opinions of our sister signatories [to an international convention] are to be entitled to considerable weight"; they are to be taken into account "in a [page 284] comparative and critical manner"  with the "integrative force of a judgment ... based on the persuasive reasoning which the decisions of the Court bring to bear on the problem at hand."
CISG Article 7(1) offers guidance to jurists of the 61 countries that have adopted the UN Sales Convention. Article 7(1) imposes a positive obligation on them to consider decisions of other fora and use them in the form of precedents. Article 7(1) calls for comity.
Flechtner calls attention to the fact that Article 7(1) of the CISG "[p]roperly understood ... requires a process or methodology involving awareness of ... interpretations of the CISG from outside one's own legal culture - an approach not unlike the treatment U.S. courts accord decisions of other [U.S.] jurisdictions when applying [the U.S.] Uniform Commercial Code."
Global implementations of the jurisconsultorium are commencing.
Courts of Italy  and Switzerland  have taken the lead; courts of the United States  and Germany  have followed suit.
Applauding a U.S. case, Medical Marketing, Schlechtriem states: "The U.S. federal court regards a foreign court decision as precedent, or at least as 'authority' and thus treats uniform international law similar to American law with the -- for American courts self-understood -- consideration given to decisions of neighboring states under the (American) common law. In other words, it treated the CISG as a kind of international common law, the application and development of which is in the hands of all nations party to the Convention, which courts must therefore also give consideration to decisions in other countries."
These are encouraging signs, but there is a long way to go. To stimulate more such comity -- similar to the comity U.S. state courts traditionally accord UCC rulings by courts of sister U.S. states - jurists of all countries should consider decisions handed down in sister jurisdictions.
To consider such decisions, they must be able to read them.
The Institute of International Commercial Law of the Pace University School of Law, in collaboration with the Centre for Commercial Law Studies of Queen Mary, University of London, has inaugurated an English text program and Case translation programme. The programme aims at making available on the Internet a (normally full text) English version of all rulings on the CISG.
In MCC-Marble, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals advises that <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu>, the cisgw3 database, is "a promising source" for "persuasive authority from courts of other states party to the CISG". Pace and [page 287] Queen Mary draw on this source. As of 15 November 2001, the cisgw3 database reports 886 CISG cases. They are cases from 30 jurisdictions. Each case can be relevant to the interpretation of the CISG in any jurisdiction.
In its first year of operation, the Queen Mary programme has provided 225 English texts or translations of texts of CISG cases, including translations of 31 Supreme Court or Highest Constitutional Court decisions. We seek to expand this work. We enlist your help.
We invite participation in the Case translation programme by all interested persons with language fluencies who believe in advancing the concept of uniform law. Join us. Help serve our profession and the world community. Contacts are: Loukas A. Mistelis  or Albert H. Kritzer  or, if you are a Mooter, Dijana Kesonja (see below).
It was in 1909, at the turn of the 20th century, that Lord Justice Kennedy presented this rationale for steps onward. In November 2001, at the dawn of the 21st century, Queen Mary and Pace report current steps onward by colleagues.
Authority granted to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres this past month by his Government to deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations an instrument of accession to the CISG that unites the international sales law of Israel with Iraq, Syria and other countries. These countries are now a common market, to this extent.
Further support for the Queen Mary Case Translation Programme is being provided.
The Moot Alumni Association (MAA) of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot  - also regarding uniform international sales law as a step onward - has appointed Dijana Kesonja of Croatia as coordinator of a new MAA "Casenote project". Mooters are law leaders of tomorrow. With Faculty coaches, they have come to the Moot from over thirty countries. There they are joined by Arbitrators from still other countries.
The object of the MAA Casenote project is to enlist further colleagues in the Case translation programme. "Casenote project" colleagues and other colleagues are most welcome. The cisgw3 database currently reports 886 cases. We must prepare to translate 10,000 CISG cases. Together, we will accommodate them.
To make uniform law case law readily available to jurists and arbitrators of all countries.
225 "tamed and assigned dragons"
The Queen Mary Case Translation Programme was set in place on 29 September 2000. The report that follows identifies [QM] case translations that have been processed during the first year of this programme. More case translations are being processed.
By jumping from the links in the case presentations, researchers can access additional information on each case, often including full texts of scholarly commentaries on the case. Other case presentation features include links to key provisions of the CISG at issue, links that enable researchers to jump to other interpretations of the provisions of the uniform law that are reviewed in the cases they are considering. These are links to judicial and arbitral interpretations of these provisions by tribunals of different countries. The case presentations also link to Annotated Texts of Articles of the CISG. The Annotated texts offer researchers additional information on provisions of the CISG of interest: data on their legislative history, on doctrine associated with these provisions, etc.
The listings in the report below identify final texts of case translations and [QM] case translations that are still "second-iteration" texts, i.e., draft translations. These are underlined listings preceded by asterisks. Researchers may enter the Internet URLs provided and jump to these draft translations too. Such translations are, of [page 292] course, accompanied by the caveat associated with any draft. Even so, we regard it as helpful to share our translation drafts with researchers anxious to access the most current information we have because, due to the caliber of scholars the [QM] programme has attracted, it has been our experience that further edits to second-iterations translations such as these have generally proved to be modest.
The following report also identifies still other [QM] case translations, case translations in process. Those listings are not underlined; researchers cannot now jump from URLs to the texts of in-process translations. These are "coming-attractions" we provide to identify case translations that have not yet progressed to the "second-iteration" stage of the [QM] Case Translation Programme. For such listings, in lieu of providing links to drafts of translated texts, we simply report the cases to identify translations that will be made available at a future date. The cisgw3 database does, however, provide links to presentations that contain other information on these cases: generally an abstract of the case, a link to the text of the case in its original language, and other relevant material on the case.
The entries in the cisgw3 country-by-country schedule of case presentations number 886. The entries in the following report on English case texts and case translations number 225. This, of course, means we have many more cases to translate. With your help, we will increase the number of translated case texts offered to our profession and the world community.
The date of the following report is 15 November 2001. Each of the 225 cases we report is identified by URL; researchers who enter these Internet URLs on their computers may jump to these case texts and case translations by clicking the URLs.
Zapata Hermanos Sucesores, S.A. v. Hearthside Baking Co., Inc., etc., U.S. District Court (N.E. Illinois).
With your help, we will expand the Queen Mary Case Translation Programme. Other elements of the cisgw3 database are also being expanded.
** Dr Loukas A. Mistelis, Clive M Schmitthoff Senior Lecturer in International Commercial Law, School of International Arbitration, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London.
1.	Franco Ferrari, "Applying the CISG in a Truly Uniform Manner", Uniform Law Review (2001-1) 206 [citations omitted].
3. Peter Schlechtriem, "Uniform Sales Law - The Experience with Uniform Sales Law in the Federal Republic of Germany", 3 Juridisk Tidskrift 1 (1991-92) 16 (emphasis added).
6. James Buchanan & Co Ltd v. Babco Forwarding and Shipping (U.K.) Ltd  1 All ER 518 (CA) at 522, 524,  2 WRL 107 (CA) at 113, 113-14; reinforced by Fothergill v. Monarch Airlines  AC 252 (HL),  All ER 696 (HL) and Antwerp United Diamonds BVBA and another v. Air Europe (a firm)  3 All ER 424 (CA).
7. Antonio Boggiano, "The Experience of Latin American States", in : International Uniform Law in Practice / Le droit uniform international dans la pratique, Oceana: New York (1988) 47.
8. Lord Scarman,  2 All E.R 696, 715.
9. Lief Sevón [Finland], "Observations", in: International Uniform Law in Practice, supra note 7, at 135.
10. Air France v. Saks, 470 U.S. 392, 404  (defining the word "accident" as used in the Warsaw Convention.
11. Bogianno, supra. note 7, at 47.
12. Jürgen Schwarze, "The Role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the Interpretation of Uniform Law among the Member States of the European Communities", in: International Law and Practice, supra. note 7, at 221.
13.	See <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cisg/countries/cntries.html> for a table of the Contracting States.
14. In the sense of Huber (1636-1694). see Joel Paul, "Comity in International Law (Private International Law)", Harvard International Law Journal (1991) 1; and the erudite Alan Watson, Joseph Story and the Comity of Errors. A Case Study in the Conflict of Laws, University of Athens Press: Athens and London (1992).
15.	Harry M. Flechtner, "Several Texts of the CISG in a Decentralized System: Observations on Translations, Reservations and Other Challenges to the Uniformity Principle in Article 7(1)", 17 Journal of Law & Commerce (1998) 187 <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cisg/biblio/flecht1.html>.
16. Philip T. Hackney, "Is the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods Achieving Uniformity?", 61 Louisiana Law Review (2001) 479.
19. See Medical Marketing v. International Medico Scientifica, 17 May 1999, U.S. District Court (E.D. Louisiana) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/990517u1.html>; and MCC-Marble v. Ceramica Nuova, 29 June 1998, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (11th Cir.) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/980629u1.html> (reference to the Internet by a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure thorough research of case law from other jurisdictions).
20. See Bundesgerichtshof 24 March 1999, <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/990324g1.html>, a German Supreme Court ruling that cites CISG authorities from England, France, Switzerland and the United States. See also Cour d'appel Grenoble 23 October 1996 <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/961023f1.html>, a French case that quotes a German court decision.
21. Peter Schlechtriem, IPRax - Praxis des International Privat- und Verfahrensrechts (1999) 791 [translated text of commentary <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/990517u1.html>].
22. See Tribunale di Vigevano 12 July 2000 <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/000712i3.html>.
23. Franco Ferrari, "Applying the CISG in a Truly Uniform Manner", supra note 1, at 208.
24. We have also seen other cases, e.g., from the United States: Filanto v. Chilewich , 789 F. Supp. 1229, 1237 (S.D.N.Y. 14 April 1992) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/920414u1.html> ("there is as yet virtually no U.S. case law interpreting the Sale of Goods Convention"); Beijing Metals v. American Business Center, 993 F.2d 1178 (5th Cir. 15 June 1993) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/930615u1.html> (citing Filanto "there is as yet virtually no U.S. case law interpreting the Sale of Goods Convention"); Delchi v. Rotorex, 71 F.3d 1024, 1028 (2nd Cir 1995) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/951206u1.html> ("there is virtually no case law under the Convention"); Helen Kaminski v. Marketing Australian Products, 1997 U.S. Dist. Lexis 10630 (S.D.N.Y. 23 July 1997) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/970723u1.html> ("there is little to no case law on the CISG . . ."); Calzaturificio Claudia v. Olivieri Footwear, 1998 U.S. Dist. Lexis 4586 (S.D.N.Y. 6 April 1998) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/980406u1.html> ("The case law interpreting and applying the CISG is sparse", citing and quoting Kaminski "there is 'little to no case law on the CISG . . .' " and Filanto "there is virtually no United States case law interpreting the CISG"); Mitchell Aircraft Spares v. European Aircraft Service, 25 F. Supp. 2d 915 (N.D. Ill. 27 October 1998) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/981027u1.html> (" 'there is virtually no case law under the Convention' ", quoting Delchi); and, as recently as this year, Supermicro Computer v. Digitechnic, 2001 U.S. Dist. Lexis 7620 (N.D. Cal. 30 January 2001) <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/010130u1.html> ("the case law interpreting and applying the CISG is sparse", citing Delchi).
25. Camilla Baasch Andersen, Uniformity in the CISG in the First Decade of Its Application", in Fletcher, Mistelis and Cremona (eds.), Foundations and Perspectives of International Trade Law, Sweet & Maxwell: London (2001), 289, 295-297.
26. Franco Ferrari, "Applying the CISG in a Truly Uniform Manner", Uniform Law Review, supra note 1, at 208. UNCITRAL's multi-lingual case law collection system ("CLOUT") has been very useful. Gerold Herrmann, "The Role of UNCITRAL", in Fletcher, Mistelis and Cremona (eds.), Foundations and Perspectives of International Trade Law, supra note 25, at 28, 33. But see Camilla Baasch Andersen, supra note 25, at 297. UNCITRAL offers a unique collection of case digests on CISG case law. However, the current reporting system does not made all rulings on the CISG readily available to the Bar and the Bench.
27. Supra note 19, at n. 14.
29. See <L.Mistelis@qmul.ac.uk> or via <http://www.ccls.edu/eclu>.
31. Lord Justice Kennedy, The Unification of Law, 10 J. Soc'y of Comp. Legis. 21, 214-215 (1909).
32. For data on the MAA, go to <http://www.maa.net>.
33. For data on the Moot, go to <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/vis.html>.
34. For data on the Casenote project, contact MAA coordinator Dijana Kesonja <dijanakesonja@hotmail.com>.
35. For Internet updates of this chart, go to <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/schedule.html>.
40. For Internet updates of this report, go to <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/schedule.html>.

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