American Contract Law for a Global Age, 2017a

not mean what it usually means in American law, which is one of the states
constituting the United States of America. Rather, a “State” under the CISG is a
sovereign nation, or perhaps more clearly, a nation state. Thus, for purposes of the
CISG, the United States is one “State.” Canada, China, and Germany are also each
a “State.” But a contract between residents of Oklahoma and Arkansas does not
involve “different States” under the CISG.
Fresh off of dealing with Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code—a large,
chapter-like grouping of statutes—you will probably notice that an “article” of the
CISG is not at all the same thing. Indeed, to most American lawyers, what the CISG
calls an “article” is more like a “section.” Do not be confused that the term “article”
refers to something different in the CISG than it does in the UCC.
Finding the Signatories and Treaty Text. A current list of countries that are
CISG signatories can be found at the following link:
http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/cisg/countries/cntries.html.
When working through some of the questions and problems in this unit (or any CISG
issue, for that matter), check to see whether or not a jurisdiction is a CISG signatory.
For convenience, some relevant provisions of the CISG are provided in the materials
below. The full text may be found in a statutory supplement, if your professor has
assigned one, or online at the following link:
http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/treaty.html.
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Cases and Materials
Treaty Text Note. Articles 1 through 7 of the CISG deal with when the
Convention does or does not apply. Read these articles and then answer the review
questions that follow.
CISG Article 1
(1) This Convention applies to contracts of sale of goods between parties whose
places of business are in different States:
(a) when the States are Contracting States; or
(b) when the rules of private international law lead to the
application of the law of a Contracting State.
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UNIT 12: CONTRACTS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SALE OF GOODS 219