To Analyse The Fundamental Breach Of Contract In The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods

United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods(hereinafter referred to as “Convention” or “CISG”) is the international uniformsubstantive law that regulates sales of goods among international equal members.Compared to the longitudinal specification of WTO multilateral trade rules, itprovides restriction, limitation and protection for the order of international sales ofgoods in a horizontal range. In the Convention lies a core concept-fundamentalbreach of contract, of which, a detailed stipulation is given in Article twenty-fifth andit is quoted by other parts of the Convention. As a premise of some right relief,fundamental breach of contract plays a pivotal role in the Convention. In domesticlegislations of all countries, most of them, including America, Germany and Chinaeither refer to or adopt the stipulation of fundamental breach of contract. Although,the system of fundamental breach of contract plays an important role and is of greatsignificance, China does not give comprehensive stipulation of fundamental breach ofcontract with shallow interpretation. For example, the Contract Law of China onlyprovides a basic stipulation of fundamental breach of contract and no terms as“fundamental breach of contract” is employed, thus leading to lots of errors anddifficulties in the interpretation and utilization.This paper reveals the misinterpretation and deficiencies of domestic legislationsof fundamental breach of contract through a study on the theoretical basis of relevantarticles of the Convention. In addition, the paper gives analysis of the system of fundamental breach of contract form different perspectives with reference to theConvention draft and relevant documents. Besides, it probes into problems concerningapplicability of fundamental breach of contract in China and provides solutions incombination with some excellent point of views of scholars from various schools.Thispaper gives an elaboration of the system of fundamental breach of contract infollowing aspects with a lot of researches on international conventions, regulations,domestic legislations of all countries and judicial cases as the background: the firstchapter is about the historical development of fundamental breach of contract. Itbriefly describes the formation and development of the system through a briefelaboration of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Saleof Goods and the system of fundamental breach of contract in combination of thedrafting process, legal basis of the Articles on fundamental breach of contract in theConvention, which is employed to illustrate the value of the system and thus anoverall presentation of the system of fundamental breach of contract is given, whichlays a foundation of researches in the following parts.Chapter II mainly dissects theelements of the fundamental breach of contract, which including fact of breach,substantial damage and predictability, each of which is of great importance for theanalysis of fundamental breach of contract. A brief analysis of the stipulations aboutfundamental breach of contract is given in the Contract Law of our country in the lastpart of this chapter. Chapter III is on the elaboration of the system of fundamentalbreach of contract. It provides an analysis of the relationship between the fundamentalbreach of contract and various remedies for breach of contract with the former beingplaced in the context of remedies for breach of contract and discusses the remedyapproaches to the fundamental breach of contract. Chapter IV mainly presents therelationship between different forms of breaches and the fundamental breach ofcontract. It provides an analysis of the relationship between two common situationswhere breach of contract happens in international trade (delay in performance anddefect in goods) and the fundamental breach of contract in combination of judicialcases. Chapter V is about the revelations on the Contract Law of our country of CISGfundamental breach of contract. Through a study of current situation of the fundamental breach of contract and in combination of study of relevant theories andpractices, it discusses whether relevant rules in other scopes of law can be used andimproved in China’s Contract Law.