Research On The Interpretation Rules Under The Article7of CISG

As the fruit of unification of substantive law regarding international sales, theUnited Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods makes ahuge impact on the international sales, reflecting the current developing trend on theinternational sales law. On the other hand, the Convention has a wide range of gapsduring the compromising process, which are required to be interpreted and filled byjudges and arbitrators.In terms of the Convention, the jointly drafting process by the ContractingMembers can only be considered as the first step in the unifying activity. If judges orarbitrators can easily recourse to domestic laws when interpreting the Convention orfilling gaps, the exclusive goal of uniformity of the Convention can never be achieved.The Art.7of the Convention sets up such rules to solve previous issues, demandingthat judges and arbitrators should interpret the Convention and fill gaps independentlyand unbiased, preventing them from the influence of their own legal concept andthoughts.The Art.7of the Convention has two paragraphs. The Paragraph (1) of the Art.7emphasizes that when interpreting the Convention, one must obey the principles ofinternationality, uniformity and good faith under the Convention. Meanwhile, judgesand arbitrators shall keep being free from the thoughts under domestic laws, but alsorefer to the scholar writings and practice in other States, to understand and respect the diverse legal, civil and political thoughts. The Convention hopes judges andarbitrators will put themselves in this self-contained international system toindependently interpret the Convention. Only in this way, the diverse judgments andforum-shopping issues can be effectively avoided.The Paragraph (2) of the Art.7mandates the gap-filling procedure. In order tokeep judges and arbitrators from directly recourse to domestic laws when facing withquestions not expressly settled under the Convention, they are supposed to refer to thegeneral principles on which the Convention is based for at first. In the absence of suchprinciples, the substantive law by virtue of the rules of private international law mayapply. Although the Convention does not define any general principle or expressly listsuch principles, some general principles have already been acknowledged by scholarsand courts in the practice. The mandate under the Art.7(2) is consider as a positivestep towards the uniformity of the Convention.This thesis has5chapters. Chapter1will briefly introduce the issues existing inthe Convention’s interpretation, and analyze the relationship between theinterpretation scheme of the Convention and that of the Vienna Convention on theLaw of Treaties. Chapter2focuses on the drafting history of the Art.7(1) to discussthe internationality, uniformity and good faith of the Convention, and also introducesome applicable methodologies. Chapter3will also concentrate on the draftingprocess of the Art.7(2), and analyze the gap-filling scheme under the Convention.Chapter4will apply the rules under the Art.7to interest rate determinations under theConvention, basing on the previous discussion. The final conclusion will besummarized in the Chapter5.