ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 31

(a) if the contract of sale involves carriage of the goods - in handing the goods over to the first carrier for transmission to the buyer;

(b) if, in cases not within the preceding subparagraph, the contract relates to specific goods, or unidentified goods to be drawn from a specific stock or to be manufactured or produced, and at the time of the conclusion of the contract the parties knew that the goods were at, or were to be manufactured or produced at, a particular place - in placing the goods at the buyer's disposal at that place;

(c) in other cases - in placing the goods at the buyer's disposal at the place where the seller had his place of business at the time of the conclusion of the contract.

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)
• Use of the Principles of European Contract Law to help interpret CISG article 31
  • Editorial remarks: Chengwei Liu [China]
  • 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 31 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedents
  • Article 31 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 31
  • 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

  • UNCITRAL digest + added cases

• Selected monographs and anthologies
• Comments on Article 31 by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany] at 1984 Parker School seminar of the American Association for the Comparative Study of Law: Ch. 6, pp. 9-16
• Comments on Article 31 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]
• Comments on Article 31 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]
• Comments on Article 31 by Ole Lando [Denmark] in 1987 Bianca-Bonell Commentary on the International Sales Law
• Comments on Article 31 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 31 in December 2000 text by Joseph Lookofsky [Denmark / U.S.]
• Commentarios al Articulo 31 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)
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries
• Ronald A. Brand [U.S.], CISG Article 31: When Substantive Law Rules Affect Jurisdictional Results, 25 Journal of Law and Commerce (2005-2006) 181-202
• Fritz Enderlein [Germany (DDR)], Rights and Obligations of the Seller under the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods [General obligations: Art. 30], in Sarcevic / Volken ed., International Sale of Goods: Dubrovnik Lectures, Oceana (1996) at 144-145

• Henry D. Gabriel [U.S.], The 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

• Jan Hellner [Sweden], The Vienna Convention and Standard Form Contracts, in: Sarcevic & Volken ed., International Sale of Goods: Dubrovnik Lectures, Oceana (1986) para. 4, 342-345

• 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

• Roadmap to Incoterms (1990), Albert H. Kritzer ed., prepared with the help of Jack Scally, former President of the National Shippers Council

• Ulrich G. Schroeter [Germany], Vienna Convention: … Interaction with the 1968 Brussels Convention (Place of performance under Art. 31 CISG), Vindobona Journal (2001) 74-86 [Section 3.3]

• Supplementary list of citations to Article 31 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 [delivery is a search form entry you may wish to consider; to compare the CISG's delivery terms with the trade terms most commonly adopted, you may also wish to enter incoterms in the bibliography search form]

  Bibliography citations on delivery

  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.

• Article 31 [Place for delivery] is part of the section entitled, Delivery of the goods and handing over of documents. This section contains four articles. For links to the other three articles; go to Annotated Text of Article 32 [Shipping arrangements]; go to Annotated Text of Article 33 [Time for delivery]; go to Annotated Text of Article 34 [Documents relating to the goods]

• See also the Convention's provisions on Passing of risk. Links to this material are to be found with the Annotated Texts of Articles 66 through 70

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:

• State of knowledge ("knew") [31(b)]; link to same language and to variations on this theme recited elsewhere in the CISG

• 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]