Through further technological development and increased globalization, conducting busines abroad has become easier, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). However, the legal issues associated with international commerce have not lessened in complexity, including the role of non-state rules. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of non-state rules in international commercial contracts. Non-state rules have legal authority in the national and international sphere, but the key question is how this legal authority can be understood and established. To answer this question this book examines first what non-state rules are and how their legal authority can be measured, it then analyses how non-state rules are applied in different scenarios, including as the applicable law, as a source of law, or to interpret either the law or the contract. Throughout this analysis three other important questions are also answered: when can non-state rules be applied? when are they applied? and how are they applied? The book concludes with a framework and classification that leads to a deeper understanding of the legal authority of non-state rules. Providing a transnational perspective on this important topic, this book will appeal to anyone researching international commercial law. It will also be a valuable resource for arbitrators and anyone working in international commercial litigation.

Transnational Commercial Law is a textbook that deals predominantly with substantive legal contract rules that apply across borders and are designed to govern cross-border business transactions. This is an emerging field of research, teaching and practical interest in international trade and commercial law, requiring reference to multiple areas of law, including both private and public international law, the law of specific commercial transactions and arbitration. For the first time Transnational Commercial Law combines all these relevant issues in one book, and provides a basis for further study as well as detailed, cutting edge academic analyses. It provides a compact yet accessible guide to the most important cornerstones of this evolving legal discipline. Transnational Commercial Law is aimed primarily for use on LLM courses and master's programmes in commercial law. Students are presented with the actual contractual rules in the wider context of the general legal framework, and situates it within the theoretical debate, providing a truly international perspective on transnational commercial law in a globalised world.

This book offers in-depth analysis of the foundations of, and justifications for, application of the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts as the governing law to be recognized by arbitral tribunals and domestic courts.

International commercial contracts in the context of increasing globalization of the national markets have posed some of the most difficult questions of the legal theory as developed since the emergence of nation states; those are, whether it is possible or desirable to allow international commercial contracts to be governed by the law merchant or, in its medieval name, lex mercatoria, a body of rules which has not been derived from the will of sovereign states, but mainly from transnational trade usages and practices, and to what extent those rules should govern transnational transactions. The traditional approach of legal positivism to the questions maintains that law governing contracts containing a foreign element should be a national law which will be determined according to choice of law rules. However, the particularities of cross border trade yield unsatisfactory results when the rules essentially designed for the settlement of domestic disputes or national laws pertaining to international economic relations, but developed under the influence of a certain legal tradition, are tried to be applied. New solutions are needed to overcome the special problems of international trade between merchants from different legal systems. In that regard, while the international commercial arbitration which has been freed from the constraints of the domestic laws is an important step, the courts generally applying the principle of party autonomy which allows parties to designate the law that will apply to their transactions have proved insufficient due to the positivistic influence on the conflict of laws rules of most countries which has limited parties' choice of law to the national substantive laws. The problems created by those inconsistencies and divergences have been felt more strongly in the European Community which constitutes an internal market by integrating the national markets of Member States into a single one. The present paper is an attempt to search for answers to those questions with a special emphasis on the situation in the European Community on the basis of the idea that law as a servant of social need must take account of the far reaching and dramatic socio-economic changes.

In theory, the numerous existing formal instruments designed to unify or harmonize international commercial law should achieve the implied (and desired) end result: resolution of the legal uncertainty and lack of predictability in the legal position of traders. However, it is well known that they fall far short of such an outcome. This innovative book (based on a conference held at the University of Aarhus in October 2009) offers deeply considered, authoritative responses to important practical questions that have still not been answered comprehensively, and that need to be answered for the efficient conduct of international commerce and for the future development of international commercial law. These questions include: ; Can clearly preferred methods of unification and harmonization be identified? What are the benefits of achieving unification and harmonization by means of party autonomy and contract practice? Is it necessary first to harmonize some aspects of private international law? Which aspects of unification and harmonization should be formal, and which can remain informal? How should formal and informal measures interact? What conflicts are likely to arise, and what resolutions are available? Should tensions be seen as inevitable, positive, and necessary? Which of several international instruments are applicable, and what order of priority should apply? Sixteen different nationalities are represented, allowing for fruitful discussion across all major legal systems. Prominent scholars and experienced practitioners offer deeply informed insights into how to navigate the complex field of international commercial law with its multiplicity of instruments, and how to resolve or neutralize the possible defects of various different means of unification and harmonization of international commercial law. These insights and proposals are sure to be welcomed by interested academics, practitioners, judges, arbitrators, and businessmen throughout the world at global, regional, and local levels.

A less-expensive grayscale paperback version is available. Search for ISBN 9781680923018. Business Law I Essentials is a brief introductory textbook designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of courses on Business Law or the Legal Environment of Business. The concepts are presented in a streamlined manner, and cover the key concepts necessary to establish a strong foundation in the subject. The textbook follows a traditional approach to the study of business law. Each chapter contains learning objectives, explanatory narrative and concepts, references for further reading, and end-of-chapter questions. Business Law I Essentials may need to be supplemented with additional content, cases, or related materials, and is offered as a foundational resource that focuses on the baseline concepts, issues, and approaches.

This paper looks at the current status and role of specific commercial contract law both national and international in view of recent European contract law reform. It reviews the value and necessity of a special and separate contract law for merchants in a global market and discusses critically the terminology, doctrine and objectives which this law is based upon. For a long time the choice of transnational law rules which are often non-state law has been marginalised and made impossible in state court proceedings. The new Common European Sales Law circumvents this problem by proposing to be used as national law. International practice in commercial dispute settlement may therefore still remain at the forefront of promoting and modelling the use of transnational contract law.