Bridge, Michael G.
(2017)
Good faith, the common law and the CISG.
Uniform Law Review, 22 (1).
pp. 98-115.
ISSN 1124-3694
Abstract
The author in this article deals with a significant point of irritation that affects the way that the civil law and the common law interact with each other and come together in the body of an international instrument such as the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The common law approaches legal rules at a significantly lower level of abstraction than the civil law and is uncomfortable with the type of general rules that appeals to the civil law mentality. The drive to codify the law in the civil law tradition creates a need for general clauses, such as those dealing with good faith. The common law views abstract statements of this kind as jeopardizing legal certainty. In the CISG, a compromise worked out in 1980 confined good faith to the interpretation of the CISG. No duty to act in good faith was imposed on the contracting parties. Nevertheless, good faith is commonly referred to in both respects in judicial decisions but in such a way as not to make it clear what good faith means or to show why there was any need to invoke it when the case could have been settled by other means.
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