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Andersen, Camilla Baasch --- "Applied Uniformity of a Uniform Commercial Law: Ensuring Functional Harmonisation of Uniform Texts through a Global Jurisconsultorium of the CISG" [2012] ELECD 346; in Andenas, Mads; Andersen, Baasch Camilla (eds), "Theory and Practice of Harmonisation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Theory and Practice of Harmonisation

Editor(s): Andenas, Mads; Andersen, Baasch Camilla

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800013

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Applied Uniformity of a Uniform Commercial Law: Ensuring Functional Harmonisation of Uniform Texts through a Global Jurisconsultorium of the CISG

Author(s): Andersen, Camilla Baasch

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

2. Applied uniformity of a uniform
commercial law: ensuring functional
harmonisation of uniform texts through
a global jurisconsultorium of the CISG*
Camilla Baasch Andersen**

DEFINING UNIFORMITY
This book, and the conference which inspired it, focuses on the theory and
practice of harmonisation. The concluding chapter grapples with the concept
of the taxonomy of harmonised law. One of the key questions here is the de-
termination of what we mean by `harmonisation' and the closely related term
`unification' of law.
Defining the concept of `uniformity' in the context of commercial law is
a complex task, as it is a term which has been used with a certain element of
obscurity.1 Any attempt to clarify it involves terminological deliberations and
a comparative analysis of the preambles to uniform laws and their aims.2 The
present chapter argues that:

1. Uniformity in law is different from a dictionary definition, as no laws are


* 1980 Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods [CISG].
** Cand.Jur. (Copenhagen), PhD (Aarhus School of Business). Fellow, Institute of
International Commercial Law, Pace University Law School, New York, USA and Senior
Lecturer in Law, University of Leicester, UK.
1
See Michael Bridge's humorous remarks in `Uniformity and Diversity in the Law
of International Sale' in 15 Pace International Law Review (Spring 2003) 55­89: `[u]
niform law represents a part of that phenomenon that we call globalisation, a word that
means so many different things to so many different people and ought on that account ...