ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 13

For the purposes of this Convention "writing" includes telegram and telex.

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
  
• Editoral analysis of this article with cross-references to related subjects [not yet available]
  
• Use of the UNIDROIT Principles to help interpret CISG Article 13 [partial presentation]
• Use of the Principles of European Contract Law to help interpret CISG article 13
  • Match-ups with Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence

• Roadmap to the legislative history of this article
• Chronology of development of Article 13 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Considerations that led to the drafting of Article 13
• [No Secretariat Commentary exists (text created at Diplomatic Conference)]
• [No match-up of this article with the 1978 draft exists]
• [No Hague Convention antecedent to this provision]

• 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 contained in Michael R. Will, Twenty Years of International Sales Law Under the CISG: International Bibliography and Case Law Digest, Kluwer Law International (2000). Prof. Will's materials are presented on the CD-Rom edition of the database.

• Selected monographs and anthologies (English language)

• Comments on Article 13 from 1999 text by John O. Honnold [U.S.] [available in CD-ROM edition only]

• Comments on Article 13 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]
• Comments on Article 13 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]
• Citations to materials on this article in other texts (selected texts only)
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries

  • To identify relevant commentaries, go to Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [general provisions ("pre/1" = instruction used to confine search to commentary titles with "general" and "provisions" presented together) is a search form entry you may wish to consider]

    Our bibliography contains thousands of citations in 24 languages; we encourage you to tailor your own bibliography search to the specific aspect of this article that you are researching.

Links to related articles

• Go to Annotated Text of Article 96 [Declaration by Contracting State preserving its domestic requirements as to form]

Words, phrases and concepts

• "writing". "Mr. Klingsporn [W. Germany], introducing [the text that became Article 13], said that a definition of the term 'writing' was of importance in the application of some provisions of the . . . Convention, such as article [29(2)]. It would avoid dispute if it was made clear in that instance that if one party submitted a proposal for modification of a contract by a telegram which the other accepted by the same means, the requirement for any modification to be in writing had been complied with. His delegation's amendment followed the definition of 'writing' which appeared in article 1, paragraph 3(g) of the Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods". OR 269, para. 71 [OR = Official Records of the United Nations Conference on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Vienna 10 March - 11 April 1980, A/CONF.97/19]

• 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