The United Nations Sale Convention: Delimitation, Influences and Concurrent Application of Domestic Law

The United Nations Convention On Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) aims at the creation of uniform international sales law to facilitate international trade. However, there are numerous sources of divergence in interpretation and application of the Convention in different jurisdictions. It is therefore possible that courts of different countries interpret the words of the convention differently. This article investigates the major influences of domestic law on the Convention’s interpretation and application. Notably the so-called “homeward trend” of interpreters is discussed. The article furthermore scrutinises the scope of Article 4 CISG in order to delimitate the Convention and domestic law. Thereafter, the author investigates the consequences of overlapping Convention law and domestic law, that is, whether a concurrent application is permissible as there is no provision in the Convention that expressly stipulates that the Convention has to be applied exclusively. The purpose of the article is to reveal that there is an intense interplay between the Convention and domestic law in various areas. It is the author’s objective to illustrate these interplays and to present different legal approaches on how to handle them.