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Over twenty years ago, the Second Circuit remarked that virtually no caselaw exists interpreting the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), a newly enacted treaty governing the international sale of goods with uniform rules of contract formation and interpretation.¹ Today, with over eighty signatory countries, including the United States, more than 3,000 reported CISG decisions are compiled into a searchable database maintained by Pace University's Institute of International Commercial Law at http://iicl.law.pace.edu/cisg/cisg.

Reported decisions now include over 500 international disputes litigated in German courts, over 400 in Chinese courts, and nearly 200 cases from the United States – to name a few. While the CISG has come a long way, the modern business reality remains that commercial parties, sophisticated and otherwise, domestic and abroad, routinely sell millions of dollars of goods through purchase orders, invoices, and boilerplate commercial forms. Indeed, under the CISG, commercial parties in international markets are freed of a formal writing requirement altogether.²

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1 See Delchi Carrier v. Rotorex Corp., 71 F.3d 1024, 1027-28 (2d Cir.1995).

2 Claudia v. Olivieri Footwear Ltd., No. 96 Civ.8052 (HB) (THK), 1998 WL 164824, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 7, 1998).

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