The challenge of a uniform application of the CISG: common problems and their solutions

Last year the CISG celebrated its 25th birthday. As of 15 January 2006, the United Nations reports that 67 states have adopted the CISG making it one of the most successful international conventions. The Pace website reports over 1,700 cases and an immense volume of academic writing is also available on this site and is readily available.\ud However despite a history of 25 years, judicial and arbitral decisions are still surfacing on a regular basis, which show a lack of understanding of the fundamental purpose of the CISG.\ud The two most common single miss-applications of the CISG are first, an ethnocentric approach and secondly, single articles are applied in isolation without due consideration to general principles contained within the convention.\ud Both of these problems have their origin in the fact that some courts and tribunals have not yet understood that the CISG must be read as a whole within its four corners. In other words the fact that the CISG contains general principles is ignored. These 'misadventures' stem from the fact that article 7 - the interpretative article - which is the cornerstone of the CISG has not been fully understood