ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 70

Legislative history || Case law || Scholarly writings || Links to related articles || Words and phrases || CISG (full-text)

Guide to this article

• UNCITRAL outline of issues present
  
• Editorial analysis of this article with cross-references to related subjects [not yet available]
  
• Secretariat Commentary (closest counterpart to an Official Commentary on this article)
• Match-up of this article with the 1978 draft
(to validate Secretariat Commentary)

• Roadmap to the legislative history of this article
• Legislative history of this article: long form
• Legislative history of this article: short form
  • Chronology of development of Article 70 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedent
  • Article 70 match-up with ULIS
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS
  • See also the Report of the Special U.S. Committee, dated 1 December 1964,
    explaining why the United States elected not to adopt either ULIS or ULF

• CASES INVOLVING CISG ARTICLE 70
  • Computer list of annotated cases

• For a companion report on CISG case law and other material, go to Unilex: click for description of and link to this excellent service

• See also:
  • UNCITRAL digest
    -   2008
    -   2012

  • UNCITRAL digest + added cases

• Selected monographs and anthologies
• Comments on Article 70 by John O. Honnold] [U.S.] at 1984 Parker School seminar of the American Association for the Comparative Study of Law: Ch. 8, p. 14

• Comments on Article 70 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]

• Comments on Article 70 by Barry Nicholas [United Kingdom] in 1987 Bianca-Bonell Commentary on the International Sales Law
• Comments on Article 70 by John O. Honnold [U.S.] in the 3rd ed. (1999) of the most frequently cited text on the CISG: Uniform Law for International Sales
• Comments on Article 70 in December 2000 text by Joseph Lookofsky [Denmark / U.S.]
• Commentarios al Articulo 70 sobre textos de 2001 por Pilar Perales [España]

• See also the helpful Enderlein & Maskow text (cited below under the words and phrases section of this Annotated Text material)

• Citations to materials on this article in other texts (selected texts only)
• Scholarly theses
• A perspective authored by a scholar of Canada at a Canadian university. Neil Gary Oberman, Transfer of risk from seller to buyer in international commercial contracts: A comparative analysis of risk allocation under the CISG, UCC and Incoterms, Laval thesis (1997)

• A perspective authored by a scholar of Greece at an English university. Dionysios Flambouras, Transfer of Risk in the Contract of Sale involving Carriage of Goods: A Comparative Study in English, Greek Law and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Oxford thesis. See also International Trade and Business Law Annual, Vol. VI., University of Queensland (2001) 87-149

• A perspective authored by a scholar of France at a French university. Sylvain Bollée, The Theory of Risks in the Vienna Sale of Goods Convention, Paris I thesis (1999)

• A perspective authored by a scholar of The Netherlands at a German university. Annemieke Romein, The Passing of Risk A comparison between the passing of risk under the CISG and German law, Heidelberg thesis (1999). Commentary also available in German text

• Zoi Valioti, Passing of Risk in international sale contracts: A comparative examination of the rules on risk under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (Vienna 1980) and Incoterms 2000, Kent University thesis (2003)
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries on passage of risk
• Michael G. Bridge [United Kingdom], The Transfer of Risk under the UN Sales Convention (CISG), in: Camilla B. Andersen / Ulrich G. Schroeter eds., Sharing International Law across National Boundaries: Festschrift for Albert H. Kritzer on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing (2008) 77-105
• Johan Erauw [Belgium], CISG Articles 66-70: The Risk of Loss and Passing It, 25 Journal of Law and Commerce (2005-2006) 203-217

• J.-Y. Kim, [Transfer of risk for international sales contracts - in Korean], Arbitration Journal: Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (2000) 295:81-95

• P. M. Roth, The Passing of Risk, 27 American Journal of Comparative Law (1979) 292-310

• Lief Sevón, Passing of Risk, in: Schweizerisches Institut für Rechtsvergleichung ed., Wiener Übereinkommen von 1980, Lausanner Kolloquium 1984, Zürich: Schulthess (1985) 191-206

• WU Dong [China], The Effect of Fundamental Breach on Passage of Risk in the International Sale of Goods under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods: Comparative Analysis with the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China, Pace essay submission (2003)
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries on Incoterms
• Henry D. Gabriel [U.S.], International Chamber of Commerce INCOTERMS 1990: A Guide to the Terms and Their Usage, 3 Vindobona Journal of International Law and Arbitration, Issue 1 (1999) 61-70

• Roadmap to Incoterms (2000), Albert H. Kritzer ed., revised by Allison E. Butler

• Burghard Piltz [Germany], INCOTERMS and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, in: Pace ed., Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) 1998, Kluwer Law International (1999) 41-51; also in: Oleg Semenov ed., CISG <online> 20 years <conference> (24 April 2000), "http://www.20jahre.cisg-library.org/piltz.html"

• Jan Ramberg [Sweden] + experts from France, U.K., U.S., Incoterms 2000: A forum of experts, ICC Publication No. 617 (2000) 131 p. [Comments on Incoterms 2000 and transport procedures: customs clearance procedures; documentary practices; why Incoterms 1990 were revised, etc]

• Comments on passage of risk under national rules, under the CISG, under Incoterms
  • Passage of title vs. passage of risk
    
  • National rules on passage of risk
    
  • The CISG and Incoterms

• Supplementary list of citations to Article 70 commentaries: Unilex citations*

  * Most members of the Autonomous Network of CISG Websites also offer bibliographies. Many are tailored, concentrating on commentaries by authors from or writing on CISG issues of special interest to specific countries or regions; some, e.g. CISG online are general and extensive; some, e.g., CISG-Belgium and CISG-Finland also list commentaries by individual articles of the CISG.

• To identify other relevant commentaries, go to the cisgw3 Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [passage/passing of risk and remedies are search form entries you may wish to consider; to compare the CISG's provisions on passage of risk with the trade terms most commonly adopted, you may also wish to enter incoterms in the bibliography search form]

  Bibliography citations on passage/passing of risk

  Citations on remedies

  Citations on incoterms

  We also encourage you to tailor your own cisgw3 bibliography search to the specific aspect of this article that you are researching.*

  * The cisgw3 bibliography contains over 500 pages of citations. Analyzing these listings can pay dividends.

Links to related articles

Attention to related articles and to the CISG in its entirety is important. This is an autonomous law, i.e., it is meant to be construed within its four corners. When considering aspects of the CISG, because this law relies heavily on general principles, one ought to look at related provisions and the CISG in its entirety.

• For links to material on fundamental breach of contract, go to Annotated Text of Article 25 [Definition of fundamental breach]

• Article 70 [Risk when seller is in breach] is part of the section entitled, Passing of risk. This section contains five articles. For links to the other four articles, Go to Annotated Text of Article 66 [Loss of damage after risk has passed to buyer]; Go to Annotated Text of Article 67 [Risk when contract involves carriage]; Go to Annotated Text of Article 68 [Sale of goods during transit]; go to Annotated Text of Article 69 [General residual rules on risk]

• See also the Convention's provisions on Delivery of the goods and handing over of documents. Links to this material are to be found with the Annotated Texts of Articles 31 through 34

Words, phrases and concepts

• The Enderlein & Maskow text is a good place to commence words and phrases research. Click for their analysis of words, phrases and concepts in this article.

  See also:

• reasonableness: Although not specifically mentioned in this article, reasonableness is a general principle of the CISG
  • For the definition of reasonableness recited in the Principles of European Contract Law and references to reasonableness in Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence, go to PECL article 1:302 and the comment and notes prepared for this provision

  • To drive home the correlation between the PECL's definition of reasonableness and the evident same meaning of this term to CISG legislators when they used the concept either specifically or as a general principle of the uniform law they drafted, see overview comments and comments that illustrate the similar manner in which this concept fits the CISG

For a Doctoral thesis on "Reasonableness" in International Commercial Law, go to Guillaume Weiszberg, Le "Raisonnable" en Droit du Commerce International [pour le doctorat en droit de l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), 7 novembre 2003]