The Legal Nature of Principles of International Commercial Contracts --- Abstract

“Principles of International Commercial Contracts” (PICC) is a document about general international commercial provisions and principles drafted by International Institute for the Unification of Private Law. After dozens of years’ research and preparation, the Principles was basically finished in 1994, and it was highly developed in 2004 on the basis of the previous version so that the general applicability of the Principles has been deeply enhanced.

The Principles is an extremely outstanding and important document concerning the principles and provisions of international commercial contracts. Although its achievements are obvious to all, there’re different opinions of its legal nature in the law circle. Some scholars consider the Principles is international commercial custom. Some regard it as a kind of model law, and some think it is international contract law restatement. Several scholars even hold that the Principles is the combination of above-mentioned forms.

In my opinion, as an important document, deep research into the legal nature of the Principles is necessary. It may make us more accurately recognize the legal nature, purpose and innate character of the Principles, correctly apply it and make full use of the Principles.

Therefore, the following article will discuss about this question.

In Part One, its drafting and revision will be briefly introduced.

In Part Two, I will analyze the legal source and the application of the Principles.

In Part Three, I will try to analyze its legal nature of the Principles mainly in the way of investigating different opinions of scholars.

 
Key words:  PICC  Legal Nature  Contract Law Restatement

Author: 刘佳殷（Katherine），April, 2009