The Uncitral Draft Convention on Assignment in Receivables Financing: Critical Remarks on Some Specific Issues
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Description
In one of his very many publications, Professor SIEHR pointed out that the unification of international contract law can be divided into basically two periods: one which relates to the unification of the law of those contracts, such as transport contracts and the contract for the sale of goods, which are universally accepted and the unification of which did therefore not pose too many problems, and a more recent one in which efforts were being made to unify the so-called “innominate contracts”. These two periods had one thing in common: they focused mainly on the unification of specific contracts. Since 1988—when Professor SIEHR wrote those remarks—this has changed. Unification efforts are actually under way which go beyond the unification of specific contracts. This paper will focus on one of these efforts: the Uncitral efforts to unify the law relating to the assignment of receivables which after several years of preparatory work by the Working Group on International Contract Practices resulted most recently in a Draft Convention on Assignment in Receivables Financing submitted to the Commission at its session held in New York, 12 June to 7 July 2000. Given the limited space allocated to this paper, I will be able to focus only on a few issues raised by the elaboration of the Draft Convention, such as its sphere of application, the general provisions as well as its provision on the conflict of conventions. The reasons I picked these issues relate to the need to put these unification efforts into a perspective which, although the starting point of any unification effort, seems to have been forgotten: the need to create one uniform law. The elaboration of new international uniform law conventions which are not coordinated among themselves and/or with already existing instruments merely leads to a multiplication of the sources of law and, thus, to a result contrary to that aimed at by trying to elaborate those very same uniform law conventions. In this respect, it is not sufficient, however, to complain about the lack of an overall unification plan. This is why this paper will merely discuss issues dealt with by the Draft Convention which are also dealt with by other international uniform law conventions, thus trying to emphasize the need if not of an overall unification plan, at least that of a uniform method in approaching specific problems and of the use uniform concepts.
Source Publication
Private Law in the International Arena: From National Conflict Rules Towards Harmonization and Unification: Liber Amicorum Kurt Siehr
Source Editors/Authors
Jürgen Basedow, Isaak Meier, Anton K. Schnyder, Talia Einhorn, Daniel Girsberger
Publication Date
2000
Recommended Citation
Ferrari, Franco, "The Uncitral Draft Convention on Assignment in Receivables Financing: Critical Remarks on Some Specific Issues" (2000). Faculty Chapters. 601.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/601
