International Origin and General Principles

Article 2A was first adopted in 2006 and was inspired and modeled after article 7 of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in an attempt to promote and enhance the uniformity of the Model Law. Despite its importance, one finds very little discussion in the 2006 travaux, and hence the assumption must have been that the principles enunciated in article 2A were either self-evident or that they were already settled (to a larger or lesser degree) on the basis of judicial and arbitral pronouncements in the context of article 7 of the CISG; or that they were discernible in general international law. This conclusion is justified by the fact that unification was already on the agenda since the first draft of the Model Law in the mid-1980s and hence was not an innovation of the 2006 revision.