ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 29

(2) A contract in writing which contains a provision requiring any modification or termination by agreement to be in writing may not be otherwise modified or terminated by agreement. However, a party may be precluded by his conduct from asserting such a provision to the extent that the other party has relied on that conduct.

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]
  
• Secretariat Commentary (closest counterpart to an Official Commentary on this article)
  • Match-up of this article with the 1978 draft
  (to validate Secretariat Commentary)
• Use of the UNIDROIT Principles to help interpret CISG Article 29
• Editorial analysis, Albert H. Kritzer [U.S.]
• Use of the Principles of European Contract Law to help interpret CISG article 29
  • Match-ups with Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence

• 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 29 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
  • The doctrine of consideration: civil law/common law reconciliation
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• [No Hague Convention antecedent to this provision]

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

• Comments on Article 29 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]

• Comments on Article 29 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

• Gyula Eörsi [Hungary], excerpt from 27 American Journal of Comparative Law (1979) 311-323

• Robert A. Hillman [U.S.], Article 29(2) of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods: A New Effort at Clarifying the Legal Effect of "No Oral Modification" Clauses, 21 Cornell International Law Journal (1988) 449-466

• John E. Murray, Jr. [U.S.], excerpt from 8 Journal of Law and Commerce (1988) 11-51

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

• To identify other relevant commentaries, go to Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [modification 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 domestic requirements as to form]

Words, phrases and concepts

• 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