ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 71

(a) a serious deficiency in his ability to perform or in his creditworthiness; or

(b) his conduct in preparing to perform or in performing the contract.

(2) If the seller has already dispatched the goods before the grounds described in the preceding paragraph become evident, he may prevent the handing over of the goods to the buyer even though the buyer holds a document which entitles him to obtain them. The present paragraph relates only to the rights in the goods as between the buyer and the seller.

(3) A party suspending performance, whether before or after dispatch of the goods, must immediately give notice of the suspension to the other party and must continue with performance if the other party provides adequate assurance of his performance.

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 71 [partial presentation]

• 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 71 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
  • North-South tensions over suspension of performance and the compromise that was crafted
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedent
  • Article 71 match-up with ULIS
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS

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

• Comments on Article 71 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]
• Comments on Article 71 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

• Harry M. Flechtner [U.S.], excerpt from Remedies Under the New International Sales Convention: The Perspective from Article 2 of the U.C.C., 8 Journal of Law and Commerce (1988) 53-108

• Harry M. Flechtner [U.S.], excerpt from The Several Texts of the CISG in a Decentralized System: Observations on Translations, Reservations and other Challenges to the Uniformity Principle in Article 7(1), 17 Journal of Law and Commerce (1998) 187-217

• To identify other relevant commentaries, go to Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [anticipatory breach ("pre/1" = instruction used to confine search to commentary titles with "anticipatory" and "breach" presented together), remed* (stem for remedies), stoppage (stem for stoppage in transit) and suspen* (stem for suspension) are search form entries 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

• Article 71 [Suspension of performance] is part of the section entitled Anticipatory breach and instalment contracts. This section contains three articles. For links to the other two articles, go to Annotated Text of Article 72 [Avoidance prior to the date for performance]; go to Annotated Text of Article 73 [Avoidance in installment contracts]

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