Canadian Jurisprudence and the Uniform Application of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods
Pace Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) 2005-2006, ed. Pace Int’l L. Rev. (Munich: Sellier European Law Publishers, 2006) pp. 85-151.
95 Pages Posted: 10 Nov 2005 Last revised: 17 Apr 2018
Abstract
In 1980 the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ("CISG" or "Convention") came into being because of a growing need for certainty in international sales contracts. As a result, functional uniformity should be at the core of the CISG. This suggests that there should be a growing international convergence of interpretations and applications of the CISG by tribunals and national courts. In this respect the purpose of the CISG is not only to create new, state-sanctioned law, but also to give recognition to the rules born of international commercial practice and to encourage national courts to apply them in a functionally uniform manner. However, to what extent are national courts heeding to the mandate of the CISG and considering international jurisprudence when deciding cases under the Convention? More specifically, this paper analyzes the extent to which Canadian courts have looked beyond domestic law when interpreting the provisions of the Convention. It considers whether they have become unsuspecting victims of the "homeward trend", by failing to implement the CISG requirement for autonomous, internationally-focused interpretations of the CISG. As the cases analyzed in this research paper illustrate, Canadian courts have tended to treat the CISG in a cursory manner, and have ultimately made decisions reflexively, on the basis of domestic law. Not only have they ignored the mandate of the Convention, but no Canadian court decision to date has treated the CISG in a serious manner, that is, without reference to domestic legal concepts. In other words, Canadian CISG jurisprudence is still permeated with domestic gloss. To the international community, this suggests that Canadian legal practitioners lack a certain analytical sophistication with international law, or suffer from legal parochialism.
Keywords: International commercial law, CISG, trade law, contracts, Canadian jurisprudence, sale of goods, private international law, law merchant, lex mercatoria, uniform law
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