Quo vadis Commercial Contract? Reflections on Sustainability, Ethics and Technology in the Emerging Law and Practice of Global Commerce

This proceedings volume combines chapters derived from papers presented at the 4th and 5th Annual Conferences on the Future of the Commercial Contract in Scholarship and Law Reform. This ongoing research project brings together scholars from all over the world at an annual international conference in London. The book focusses on technology in commercial contract law as well as on sustainability in commercial contracts. The latter theme was inspired by the United Nations' climate conference that was to take place in Glasgow in the United Kingdom that same year. The book combines topical current issues in commercial contract law and practice organized in three parts. The first part contains contributions to the area of law and technology. The second part of the book expands on aspects of sustainability understood as environmental reasonableness in the context of commercial contracts. The third part includes several chapters on the topics of supervening events and contractual ethics. Thisbook is therefore part of a coherent line of contributions to the furthering of modern contract theory. The choice of topics is closely following current issues of legal policy and contract practice.

Preface.- Supply chain laws update – Ethics in global commerce through contract and regulation. An introduction.- Part 1: Law and technology.- The role of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the interpretation of platform operators and business users contracts.- Freedom to contract and democracy in the age of blockchain and smart contract.- Part 2: sustainability in commercial contracts.- Eco-reasonableness. Possibilities of incorporating green principles into general private law Clauses.- Right to cure – the odd one out? The CISG's remedial scheme and the circular economy.- From “green bond principles” to “green bond clauses”: mitigating greenwashing through contract law.- Part 3 : Supervening events and contractual ethics.- The Consequences of Brexit for Regulatory Competition and the Approximation of Commercial Law.- A new approach to contracts breached by COVID-19.- Hong Kong Insurance Industry in Response to COVID-19.- Uniformity or Diversity of the Concept of Good Faithunder the CISG and UAE Law.- The Erosion of Contractual Freedom in Commercial Contracts. A Belgian case-study.- Inequality of Bargaining Power and Arbitration: The Tale of Uber.

Professor Mads Andenas QC, Director of LCF, Institute of Private Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.