Balancing the Uniformity of Article 8 CISG on the Altar of Reasonableness

This paper focuses on art.8 of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods (CISG) which regulates interpretation of party intent and argues for a more contextual approach within the legal interpretation of the ‘reasonable person’, as was originally intended by the CISG drafters. In doing so, it evaluates the available cases and scholarship of the provision against the intent of the drafters, weighing the drafters intent and the need for uniformity. In this analysis we bring in relational contract theory and commercial sense, which we argue is an excellent fit for CISG interpretation, as well as our own brand of a uniform standard (“contextual uniformity”) which works well within art.8’s purpose. We conclude that we can extract specific common denominators in commercial behaviour to develop more pragmatic uniformly understood factors which can help the interpretation of art.8 of the CISG in context.