The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods: Selection of Typical Arbitration Cases

On April 11, 1980, at the United Nations Conference on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods held in Vienna, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (hereinafter “the Convention”) was approved through Resolution No. 33/93 of the United Nations General Assembly and made available to all states for signature, ratification, and accession. The Convention is an important and widely adopted commercial treaty which provides a uniform text of laws for the international sale of goods within its scope. Its purpose is to provide a modern, uniform, and fair regime for contracts for the international sale of goods, thereby introducing certainty in commercial exchanges and decreasing transaction costs. The Convention has been in force in China since January 1, 1988 after China acceded to the Convention on December 11, 1986. As of June 29, 2023, the Convention has had 95 contracting states join,1 basically covering the world’s most important trading entities.

As the first arbitral institution in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration (hereinafter “the SCIA”) has dealt with a large number of international trade cases with the application of the Convention since 1988 and thus has accumulated rich experience in solving disputes over the international sale of goods. To help domestic and foreign legal and business communities better understand the main points of international trade disputes, 25 representative cases handled by the SCIA relating to the application of the Convention have been carefully selected and included in this book.

This book covers 10 important issues, including the application of the Convention, the formation and validity of the contract for the international sale of goods, the obligations of the buyer in the contract for the international sale of goods, the obligations of the seller in the contract for the international sale of goods, actual performance and damages, declaration of contract avoidance, force majeure and change in circumstances, commodity inspection and claims, INCOTERMS, and payment in international trade, which basically cover the major disputes over contracts for the international sale of goods. For ease of reference, each case in this book is structured in a well-organized format: the basic facts of the case, statements by the parties, facts found by the arbitral tribunal, opinions of the arbitral tribunal, the award, and comments and analysis.

The Chinese language edition of this book, Selection of Typical Arbitration Cases of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, was published by Peking University Press in 2020 with the prospect of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Convention. The Chinese version received great attention from the public and has been acclaimed by the Chinese market since publication. In order to benefit more users and legal practitioners in the field of international trade, the English version is now published. The book aims at deepening the understanding of the adjudication trend in the field of arbitration of disputes over the international sale of goods, providing a useful reference for current academic discussions, helping the arbitration community strengthen their knowledge of the Convention both theoretically and practically.

The book is Volume 15 in the Chinese and Comparative Law series published by BRILL Nijhoff