1 Report of the Second Committee, UN Doc.A/9946, 28 (Dec. 9,1974); UN Doc. A/Re s/3 281 (XXIX) (Jan. 15, 1975); reprinted in 14 ILM 251. The roll-call vote was 120 in favor, 6 opposed (Belgium, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and 10 abstentions (Austria, Canada, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain).

2 Speech of Emilio O. Rabasa, Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico, 68 ASIL PROC. 302 (1975).

3 In one sense, then, the Central/East European countries are now free to join the rest of the developing world, and to “[comprehend] the principles of the self-reliance of the individual which implies misery, homelessness or starvation as penalty for failure.” Milosz, Czeslaw, Central European Attitudes, 5 Cross Currents 101, 104 (1986)Google Scholar. See also Zaieska, K. J., Local Cultural Responses to Multinationals, in 1 Nationalism Notes 23 (November 1992)Google Scholar.

4 See Gabriela Apostol, 1 Nationalism Notes 18,19: (Globalization can be viewed as “penetration of capitalist market forces … or in terms of cultural homogenization through the world-wide spreading of certain consumer goods and values”).

5 See Czeslaw Milosz, citing Stanislaw Witkiewicz, supra note 4, at 105–06.

6 See, e.g., Emiliou, Nicholas, Subsidiarity: An Effective Barrier Against “the Enterprises of Ambition”?, 17 Eur. L. Rev. 383 (1992)Google Scholar.

7 Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 546 (1985) (Blackmun, J.) (citing New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)).

8 254 NATION 410 (1992).

9 Jackson, John H. & Davey, William J., Legal Problems of International Economic Relations 1242 (2d ed. 1986)Google Scholar.

10 E.g., the Incoterms prepared by the International Chamber of Commerce.

11 E.g., those prepared by the Economic Commission for Europe.

12 For example, it has concluded Inter-American Conventions on International Commercial Arbitration, on Letters Rogatory, on Taking Evidence Abroad, and on the International Return of Minors.

13 One reason for the success of the CISG vis-a-vis earlier efforts to promote international rules for the sale of goods is that UNCITRAL is more inclusive than the traditional Eurocentric approaches toward uniform substantive law.

14 See, e.g., Amended Proposal for a regulation on the Statute for a European company, 1991 O.J. (C 176), at 9.

15 See Currall, Julian, Some Aspects of the Relation between Articles 30–36 and Article 100 of the EEC Treaty, with a Closer Look at Optional Harmonisation, 4 Y.B. Eur. L. 169, 179 (1985)Google Scholar.

16 REWE, case 120/79, [1979] ECR 649.

17 COM 310 final (14 June 1985).

18 See Reich, Norbert, Competition Between Legal Orders: A New Paradigm of EC Law?, 29 Common Mkt. L. Rev. 861 (1992)Google Scholar.

19 See Vignes, Daniel, The Harmonisation of National Legislation and the EEC, 15 Eur. L. Rev. 358 (1990)Google Scholar. See also Boodman, Martin, The Myth Of Harmonization Of Laws, 39 Am. J. Comp. L. 699, 718 (1991)Google Scholar. (“The arguments in favor of harmonization of laws generally … based on certainty in the law … raise serious issues of legal and political theory regarding hermeneutics, legal reasoning and the role of precedent, as well as the role of formal systems of law in states and society. These issues are not addressed in any detail in the literature regarding harmonization of laws and … are unresolved.”).

20 H. P. Glenn, Harmonization of Private Law Rules Between Civil and Common Law Jurisdictions: General Report, XIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law 1, 3 (Montreal, 1990). Harmonization may be formal (i.e., achieved via bilateral or multilateral institutional efforts) or informal.

21 Glenn, supra note 20, at 4. See also Tebbens, H. Duintjer, Private International Law and the Single European Market: Coexistence or Cohabitation?, in University of Amsterdam, Forty Years On: The Evolution of Postwar Pil in Europe 49 (1990)Google Scholar (observing the expanding range of private law matters covered by harmonizing directives in recent years).

22 Compare Glenn, supra note 20, at 2 (“Harmonization, if it is said to exist, must… accommodate and encadre disagreement.”) with Boodman, supra note 19, at 718 (suggestion that there must be a market for laws in order to justify harmonization).

23 E.g., customs law, company law, banking law, company accounts and taxes, intellectual property, protection of workers at the workplace, financial services, rules on competition, protection of health and life of humans, animals and plants, food legislation, consumer protection (including product liability), indirect taxation, technical rules and standards, transport and the environment.

24 For a Canadian example, see Boodman, supra note 19.

25 Tebbens, supra note 21, at 62.

26 Boodman, supra note 19, at 708.

27 This feature marks a significant difference between the 1964 Uniform Law for International Sales and the CISG (Article 7(2)) provides that “[q]uestions concerning matters governed by this Convention which are not expressly settled in it are to be settled in conformity with the general principles on which it is based or, in the absence of such principles, in conformity with the law applicable by virtue of the rules of private international law.”).

28 Kötz, Hein, Rechtsvereinheitlichung: Nutzen, Methoden, Ziele, 50 Rabelsz 1 (1986)Google Scholar (describing the morass of rules as a “Hydra”).

29 Rosett, Arthur, Critical Reflections on the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 45 Ohio St. L. J. 265 (1984)Google Scholar. See also Behrens, Peter, Voraussetzungen und Grenzen der Rechtsfortbildung durch Rechtsvereinheitlichung, 50 Rabelsz 19 (1986)Google Scholar.

30 Charlesworth, Hilary, Chinkin, Christine & Wright, Shelley, Feminist Approaches to International Law, 85 AJIL 613 (1991)Google Scholar.

31 Project of Spencer W. Waller & Joel Reidenberg, discussed in ASIL International Economic Law Interest Group Newsletter, Fall 1992, at 3.

32 See, e.g., Article 100A (3) of the EEC Treaty, which provides that the Commission shall take as a base a “high level of protection” in the approximation of laws concerning health and safety (including consumer and environmental protection). Article 100A (4) adds that EC member states maintaining an even more protective standard than the “high” level do not have to take a step down. See also CISG Article 14(1), (providing that an offer is too indefinite unless it “expressly or implicitly fixes or makes provision for determining the … price”). This provision appears to raise the prohibition against open-price terms, found in the laws of some countries, to the level of an international norm.

33 See André Tune’s commentary on the 1964 Hague Conventions on International Sale of Goods and the Formation of the Contract of Sale in Diplomatic Conference on the Unification of Law Governing the International Sale of Goods (Records), The Hague 355 (1966).

34 Rabel, Ernst, Observations on the Utility of Unifying [the] Law of Sale from the Standpoint of the Needs of International Commerce (1929), in League of Nations: Draft of an International Law of the Sale of Goods 123, 128, 131 (1935)Google Scholar.

35 The case law of the European Court of Justice under the Brussels Convention also wrestles with this issue on a case-by-case basis. See Industrie Tessili Italiana Como v. Dunlop AG, 1 C.M.L.R. 26, 51–52 (1977): “The question therefore arises whether these words and concepts must be regarded as having their own independent meaning and as being thus common to all the member-States or as referring to substantive rules of the law applicable in each case under the rules of conflict of laws of the court before which the matter is first brought.”

36 This analysis is developed in Hartnell, Helen, Rousing the Sleeping Dog: The Validity Exception to the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 18 Yale J. Int’l L. 1, 5 (1993)Google Scholar.

37 Tebbens, supra note 21, at 51–52.

38 Id. at 67–68.

39 E.g., Regulation No. 2137/85 creating the European Economic Interest Group, 1985 O.J. (L 199) at 1 (Article 2(1)).

40 E.g., Directive 88/357 of 22 June 1988 on non-life insurance, 1988 O.J. (L 172) at 1 (renvoi to each member state’s choice-of-law rules to determine the permissible extent of party autonomy and the impact of mandatory rules of certain connected laws other than the law designated by the uniform rules).

4l Tebbens, supra note 21, at 52 (noting that some recent directives “do not contain scope rules defining their own international applicability, nor do they indicate, when referring certain issues to ‘national law,’ how that law is to be selected”).

42 See d’Oliveira, H. Jessurun, Towards a “European” Private International Law?, in Witte, B. De & Forder, Caroline (Eds), The Common Law of Europe and the Future of Legal Education 265, 266–67 (1991)Google Scholar (noting the “[g]rowing bulk of Community and para-Community conflict provisions” and that “the necessity to deal with rules from international sources” means that modern PIL codifications “have become interstitional, filling up the spaces which conventions have left open”).

43 See Jessurun d’Oliveira, supra note 42, at 276.

44 See Danilenko, Gennady M., International Jus Cogens: Issues of Law-Making, 2 Eur. J. Int’l L. 42 (1991)Google Scholar.

45 See Tebbens, supra note 21, at 68 (arguing that the “principles of proportionality and of nondiscrimination” may “reduce the freedom of the Member States to invoke their public policy,” citing as an example the German rule restricting recovery in tort against German nationals to the extent allowed by German law, even if foreign law governs the tort).

46 Tebbens, supra note 21, at 69 (discussing Article 16 of the Rome Convention and inquiring into the extent to which “Member States may declare their own rules, e.g., consumer protection, to be mandatory for the purpose of applying the Rome Convention in areas such as supply of financial services where EC directives allow foreign service suppliers to deal on terms fixed by the law of their own State”).

47 Jessurun d’Oliveira, supra note 42, at 276.

48 Id. at 277 (citing examples from EC case law and legislation).