PREFACE

Globalised trade necessitates globalised legal thinking. This is especially true in the field of contract law in general, and sales law in particular. It is an easy statement to make, but not quite so easy to implement. We believe a range of factors informs what actually amounts to globalised legal thinking and we hope these permeate throughout this book. We have been guided by our belief in the need to enhance respect for different legal thinking, and to improve access and understanding of these different approaches, and to further the dialogue and exchange of ideas that already exists.

We have sought to produce a practical endeavour something that can actually be used in practice in other words we did not set out to build theories but rather give answers to practical problems. In the process we have attempted to underscore the relevance of comparative legal studies and the functional comparative approach in particular. We hope that our work will be used by a large spectrum of those involved in contract and sales lawranging from students and academic researchers, to legal practitioners, as well as law makers. With this in mind we have written the book so that it can be read and utilised in two ways. This is a book which can be read cover to cover. However it can also be used as a reference source for particular issues.

We are well aware that one can really only fully understand the operation of law in jurisdiction from the inside, and while we have all lived and worked in several jurisdictions, our personal experience does not extend to all the jurisdictions covered in this book. As such we have relied heavily on the advice of our core research team, our correspondents and existing academic texts. We have done our best to confirm the accuracy of the information we report. This has been particularly difficult at times, especially where legislation and commentary was only available in languages not spoken by any of our team. In a variety of instances we have had to work from unofficial translations where our experience suggested these translations may not be entirely accurate we have endeavoured to express a qualified view.

This book is the result of a four year research project conducted at the University of Basel, Switzerland under the direction of Prof Dr Ingeborg Schwenzer LLM, and the two senior researchers Dr Pascal Hachem and Dr Christopher Kee. Dr Kees doctoral thesis on validity in sales law is published as Part IV of this work.

The work on this book has been a daunting but extremely rewarding challenge, and it would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many people. The core research team in Basel consisted of Dr Mohamed Hafez LLM, Dr Jean Alain Penda Matipe LLM, Dr Natia Lapiashvili LLM, Dr Edgardo Munoz LLM, and Dr Sophia Juan Yang LLM. Additional specific research assistance was provided by Ba ak Ba o lu, LLM, Claire Chabat, LLB MLaws, Yulia Douanova, Deepaloke Chatterjee, Dr Kevin Kee MEd, MEd (Admin), Candy Tang, Gabriela Vizcano, Claudio Marti MLaw, Philippe Monnier MLaw, Sarbajeet Nag, Alissa Anita Palumbo JD, Ref. iur. David Tebel. Valuable assistance was also received from numerous student assistantsstud iur Christoph Burckhardt, Tomie Keller BLaw, stud iur Lukas Meyer, stud iur Christian Schlumpf, stud iur Nicole Schmidt. Last but not least we were supported by a worldwide network of correspondents. We are greatly indebted to all these people and sincere thank them for their contributions.

Our work would not have been possible without financial support from a number of organisations, in particular the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft, the Max Geldner-Stiftung, and the Stiftung zur Frderung der rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen Forschung an der Universitt Basel. A resource contribution was also made be Mr Cristobal Reitze.

We also received statements of support from various international organisations for which we are very grateful. These organisations were in alphabetical order: Association Suisse de lArbitrage, Beijing Arbitration Commission, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, CISG Advisory Council, Institute for International Commercial Law (Pace University), Institute for Private International Law in Africa (University of Johannesburg), Ohada, and the Singapore International Arbitration Centre.