ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 56

Legislative history || Case law || Scholarly writings || 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)

• 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 56 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedent
  • Article 56 match-up with ULIS
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS

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

• Comments on Article 56 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]

• Citations to materials on this article in other texts (selected texts only)

Words, phrases and concepts

• packaging. According to Article 56, if the price is fixed according to the weight of the goods, it shall, in case of doubt, be determined by the net weight. This Article seems to cause few difficulties. The provision does not answer the question whether the buyer shall pay for packaging. According to Article 35(2)(d) the goods do not conform to the contract unless they are contained or packaged in a manner usual for such goods. It is thus up to the seller to provide such packaging. It would seem that the seller cannot charge separately for packaging which he is required to provide but would have to include the calculated cost for such packaging into his price." Lief Sevón, Obligations of the Buyer under the Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods (1990) at 332.

• 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