Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART 1 How contracts are written in practice
- Introduction to Part 1
- 1 Negotiating international contracts: does the process invite a review of standard contracts from the point of view of national legal requirements?
- 2 Multinational companies and national contracts
- PART 2 Methodological challenges
- PART 3 The applicable law's effects on boilerplate clauses
- Conclusion: the self-sufficient contract, uniformly interpreted on the basis of its own terms: an illusion, but not fully useless
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction to Part 1
from PART 1 - How contracts are written in practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART 1 How contracts are written in practice
- Introduction to Part 1
- 1 Negotiating international contracts: does the process invite a review of standard contracts from the point of view of national legal requirements?
- 2 Multinational companies and national contracts
- PART 2 Methodological challenges
- PART 3 The applicable law's effects on boilerplate clauses
- Conclusion: the self-sufficient contract, uniformly interpreted on the basis of its own terms: an illusion, but not fully useless
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Using a certain language to write a contract does not necessarily mean that the legal system that is expressed in that idiom is applied. This is clearly shown by the fact that often the parties to a contract that is written in the English language expressly choose a governing law that is not expressed in English, be it the law of the state to which one of the parties belongs, the law of the state where the contract shall be performed or the law of a third state, which is deemed to be neutral and therefore preferred by both parties. Therefore, it should not be surprising to see commercial contracts written in English, but structured in the same way as a contract would be structured under the law that the parties have chosen to govern their relationship. These contracts would be developed and written according to the legal technique and legal tradition of the governing law, and only from a linguistic point of view would they be expressed in English. The process of drafting would not necessarily have to take place in two tiers, first writing the contract in the original language and then translating it into English. It could very well be possible to think and structure the contract according to the criteria of the governing law and write it directly in English, although the difficulties of expressing legal concepts in a foreign language are well known, that is, of separating the means of expression from the object that is expressed.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011