Digest of Caselaw on International Trade

The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, or CISG, is a treaty governing international trade that has been adopted by over 75 countries worldwide. The CISG was drafted at the United Nations Commission on International Trade, or UNCITRAL, and entered into force in 1988. The CISG is considered one of UNCITRAL’s most successful treaties.

The caselaw encompassing the CISG is vast, so you’ll want to approach it systematically. That’s where a digest comes in. You’ll recall from your legal research class that the West Key-Number Digests classify and organize American caselaw, making it easier to find relevant information.

While most international caselaw digest systems do not offer the specificity of West’s headnotes and topic and key number system, they can still be useful as finding aids.

UNCITRAL has recently updated their digest of CISG caselaw, issuing a 2012 edition. The original CISG digest was published in 2004, and there was a partial update in 2008. All three can be found here.  You can use these digests in conjunction with UNCITRAL’s CLOUT database to locate cases on international trade law.

Here’s how it works. Say you’re interested in caselaw interpreting Article 60 of the CISG on the buyer’s obligation of ‘taking delivery.’ Using the digest, you turn to that article, then examine the annotations. You’ll see case references and CLOUT case numbers. You can take the CLOUT case number, enter it into the template for searching CLOUT,  and retrieve the fulltext of the case (which may not be in English!).

You can also use the CLOUT database to locate caselaw on the important 1958 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitration Awards, aka the New York Convention.