ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 1

(1) This Convention applies to contracts of sale of goods between parties whose places of business are in different States:

(a) when the States are Contracting States; or

(b) when the rules of private international law lead to the application of the law of a Contracting State.

(2) The fact that the parties have their places of business in different States is to be disregarded whenever this fact does not appear either from the contract or from any dealings between, or from information disclosed by, the parties at any time before or at the conclusion of the contract.

(3) Neither the nationality of the parties nor the civil or commercial character of the parties or of the contract is to be taken into consideration in determining the application of this Convention.

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
  
• Secretariat Commentary (closest counterpart to an Official Commentary on this article)
• Match-up of this article with the 1978 draft
(to validate Secretariat Commentary)

Legislative history

• 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 1 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedents
  • Article 1 match-up with ULIS/ULF
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS
  • ULF (full-text)

Case law

• • Michael Joachim Bonell & Fabio Liguori [Italy], excerpt from The UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods: A Critical Analysis of Current International Case Law - 1997 (Part 1), Uniform Law Review (1997) 385-395

  • Martin Karollus [Austria], excerpt from Judicial Interpretation and Application of the CISG in Germany 1988-1994, Cornell Review of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (1995) 51-94

• For further information on CISG case law (material not in this database), go to Unilex: click for a description of the contents of this service. Also of considerable utility are the compendium of case citations and the CISG bibliography produced by Prof. Michael R. Will, Faculté de Droit, Université de Genève, 102 Bd Carl-Vogt, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.

Scholarly writings on this article

• Selected monographs and anthologies (English language) [this link identifies commercial texts not in the database]
• Comments on Article 1 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries

• Roland Loewe [Austria], The Sphere of Application of the UN Sales Convention [presentation at the 1997 Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot on the CISG], Pace International Law Review, Vol. X (1998) 79-88

• Peter Schlechtriem [Germany], excerpt from Uniform Sales Law: The Experience with Uniform Sales Laws in the Federal Republic of Germany, Juridisk Tidskrift (1991/92) 1-28

• Peter Winship [U.S.], excerpt from Changing Contract Practices in the Light of the United Nations Sales Convention: A Guide for Practitioners, 29 International Lawyer (1995) 525-554

• Supplementary list of Article 1 commentaries

• To identify other relevant commentaries, go to Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [place of business ("pre/2" = instruction used to confine search to commentary titles with "place" and "business" presented together), internationality and sphere of application are search form entries you may wish to consider]

  The search buttons come with a caveat: the bibliography contains thousands of entries; an improved coding system is under construction.

Links to related articles

• Go to Annotated Text of Article 10 [Definition of "place of business"]; go to Annotated Text of Article 95 [Declaration by Contracting State that it will not be bound by Article 1(1)(b)]

• Article 1 defines the scope of the CISG. Article 2 excludes certain types of sales. Article 3 clarifies the application of the Convention to contract of work and materials. Go to Annotated Text of Article 2 [Exclusions from Convention]; go to Annotated Text of Article 3 [Goods to be manufactured; services]

Words and phrases encountered in Article 1

• CISG cross-references
  • "places of business" (1(1) and 1(2)). For links to significance of this phrase to many provisions of the Convention, go to Annotated Text of Article 10

  • "rules of private international law" (1(1)(b)). For another use of this phrase, go to Annotated Text of Article 7 [Interpretation of Convention] (see 7(2))

• Further commentary on Article 1 words, phrases and concepts [not yet available]

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