Originally from:
Practitioner's Guide to the CISG - Hardcover
Practitioner's Guide to the CISG - Electronic
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§ 2.1 Overview
§ 2.1.1 Interpretation of the CISG
(a) Article 7(1)
Courts and lawyers should be prepared to spend considerable
more time and resources in trying a CISG case. Why? Because the
CISG is understood to require, inter alia, an interpreter to consider
not only domestic case law applying the CISG and domestic
commentaries on the CISG but also foreign decisions and writings
from foreign authors. Foreign decisions, although not widely
available, can be accessed through several electronic sources, most of
which are free. For example, case abstracts in English are available at
the UNCITRAL data base; UNILEX, in addition to abstracts, also
provides hundreds of cases in their original language. The Pace Law
School CISG data base is certainly the most comprehensive: case law
in their original languages, hundreds of cases translated into
English, and about 1,200 scholarly writings (the vast majority of
them in English), and all of them easily accessible. Scholarly writings
published in American law reviews may be available in both print
and electronic forms through Lexis Nexis and Westlaw.
Research related to a CISG case is aimed at fulfilling two main
goals behind the Convention: (i) Autonomy: The Convention is an
autonomous text (it should not be construed through the
interpreter’s own domestic legal background) and (ii) Uniformity of
application (it should be applied in a uniform manner throughout
the Contracting States). Both are ambitious goals. So far, it is safe to
say that courts do not intentionally mean to disrupt the uniform
application of the CISG so much as courts have had difficulty in
determining the kind of uniform approach necessary to properly
decide a CISG dispute. Deciding or trying a CISG dispute requires
that both attorneys and judges deemphasize their domestic-law
backgrounds and emphasize the international character of the
Convention. The CISG is a text resulting from synthesizing several
approaches to similar issues. Therefore, it is a mistake to read
domestic legal concepts into CISG provisions, even where the CISG
Full Table of Contents from "Practitioner's Guide to the CISG"
Francesco G. Mazzotta holds law degrees from the University of Naples, Italy, (Dottore in Giurisprudenza) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law (Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law and Juris Doctor). He has had legal internships with a United States Magistrate Judge, the Office of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, as well as with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in Vienna, Austria. He has served as an arbitrator for the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court in Vienna and as an adjunct professor in universities in both the United States and Italy. Mr. Mazzotta has authored numerous articles on the CISG and, after clerking with several trial judges in Pennsylvania, he is currently a judicial law clerk in the chambers of the Honorable Judge John M. Cleland on the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Mr. Mazzotta is admitted to the bar in New York (U.S.A.) and Italy.
