Abstract This article examines the legal significance of the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Ecoterms® for international commercial contracts governed by the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law’s (Unidroit) Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC). It argues that, although Ecoterms® do not allocate contractual rights and obligations in the manner of the ICC Incoterms®, they may nevertheless shape contractual meaning by defining sustainability-related concepts such as ‘recycling’, ‘reuse’, ‘waste’, ‘refurbishing’, and ‘secondary raw material’. The article identifies three doctrinal gateways through which Ecoterms® may become legally relevant: express incorporation as contractual definitions; interpretation of party statements and contractual language under Article 8 of the CISG and Articles 4.1–4.3 of the PICC; and, in appropriate cases, supplementation or integration of the contract as practices or trade usages under Article 9 of the CISG and Article 1.9 of the PICC. It concludes that Ecoterms® version 1.0 should not yet be treated as a binding trade usage in toto. However, individual definitions may gradually acquire that status in particular sectors if they become widely known and regularly observed in contracting, procurement, audit, and compliance practices. In this sense, the ICC Ecoterms® are for now best understood as an emerging vocabulary of sustainable trade: not a self-standing normative regime, but a promising instrument for translating sustainability commitments into more precise and enforceable contractual meaning.
Abstract Venezuela is a prime example for the need of an orderly resolvency proceeding for sovereigns. In an old Catonian manner, the present author reminds of the present days’ deficiencies when concentrating on soft law solutions or contractual ones.
Abstract International construction contracts are often described as harmonized because global projects frequently use standard forms from the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC). The description is incomplete. Standard forms harmonize contractual language, but they do not harmonize the legal consequences attached to notice, variations, delay, contemporary records, dispute board determinations, and arbitral proof. Those consequences remain dependent on domestic doctrines of waiver, estoppel, good faith, prevention, causation, proof, and contractual interpretation. Future international principles on construction and engineering contracts need not codify FIDIC practice wholesale. Their better function is to provide a transnational default framework that supplements party autonomy while reducing doctrinal fragmentation. Taking FIDIC practice as the central case study, the article distinguishes contractual standardization from legal harmonization and identifies five recurring fracture points in international construction disputes. It proposes draft principles and commentary designed for parties, adjudicators, arbitrators, and legislators. The article contributes to uniform law by showing how sector-specific principles can supplement the general framework of transnational commercial law without becoming a model contract or displacing the applicable law.
Abstract Decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystems increasingly rely on smart contracts to coordinate data access, model training, incentives, and governance without a central orchestrator. At the same time, the European Union’s (EU) digital regulation imposes stringent obligations that are structurally difficult to satisfy in distributed settings, particularly obligations that depend on identifiable accountability, controllable data flows, and effective exercise of data-subject rights. This article develops a legal-technical framework for executable data protection by design in decentralized (federated) AI ecosystems: a set of contract patterns, governance roles, and compliance interfaces that translate the core duties of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into operationally enforceable constraints within smart-contract systems while remaining compatible with cross-border automated contracting practice. The framework is anchored in GDPR Article 25 (‘data protection by design and by default’) and operationally integrates the principles of lawfulness, data minimization, security, demonstrable consent withdrawal, and joint-controllership allocation. It also accounts for the Digital Markets Act’s (DMA) fair-market logic by specifying boundary conditions for data combination, interoperability, and portability when decentralized AI interacts with gatekeeper-controlled distribution or communications layers. The article contributes (i) a doctrinal synthesis of GDPR role allocation and design duties as applied to decentralized federated AI; (ii) a novel ‘rights-to-actions’ automation layer enabling GDPR rights workflows without placing personal data on-chain; (iii) model contractual clauses and governance ‘role maps’ aligned with transnational automated-contracting principles and harmonization aims; and (iv) three detailed case studies illustrating feasibility, tensions, and enforcement pathways.
Abstract Transnational law and its areas should not and cannot be treated in isolation, or at least not in absolute isolation, from public international law and the technique of conflict of laws. The concept of interpretation connects the above-mentioned three disciplines, both through process and through concept. This article explores how interpretation, through the so-called ‘choice of assemblage clauses’, operates in transnational situations, where various actors mobilize—through contracts, treaties, customs, and practices—rules, rules of law, general principles of law, or principles of international law and processes. All these actors and rules, rules of law, general principles of law, or principles of international law and processes encourage scholars to understand transnational law as a legal or legal-like assemblage, where the same concept is shared by transnational, international, and domestic normativity or where various sources become components of new governing law applicable to particular frameworks. This type of clause suggests the need to build a conceptual brotherhood between transnational law, public international law, and the technique of conflict of laws.
