Materials for Teaching Comparative Commercial Law

Content and Linkages to TCL

Prof. Jeffrey Wool, UW Law and HMC, Oxford via video link

Transnational Commercial Law - 7th Teachers' Conference 25.11.2015, University of Western Australia

Comparative Commercial Law Project(Commercial Law Centre, HMC, Oxford)

Transaction / DoingBusiness / Lawyering

Understanding Commercial Transactions

Extracting General Principles of

Commercial Law

Transnational Commercial Law

Substantive and Comparative

Commercial Law

Comparative Commercial Law

Courses

Objectives

OVERVIEW

CCL project generally

• Research project aimed to fill critical gap in teaching of TCL• Addressing students’ limited knowledge of -

– Underlying commercial transactions subject to TCL instruments– Basic legal principles, esp. on comparative basis, re such transactions

• Central to understanding TCL instruments, even those advancing best international practices

• Developing materials for a CCL course, which can be –– A prerequisite or a companion to TCL, or– Used as assigned background materials for a TCL course

• CCL merits study and development for its own sake, independent of its link to TCL

• Some features -- open source, global, e-format

Work and materials to date• To start and accelerate work, a tutorial with preliminary materials (the Materials)

was taught by J. Wool at UW law school [summer 2015] • The approach taken, and the Materials, can be critiqued inter alia on grounds of

complexity• Basic elements –

– 1. An archetype transaction, addressing contract, security, guarantees, was given to the students

– 2. Full transaction documents were provided– 3. General questions were posed, in transactional-functional terms, raising

basic issues in the above-noted fields of law– 4. Major international law firms (and one University) were asked to answer

the questions (and give cites and bibliographical references) under the laws of select common law jurisdictions [England and New York], civil law jurisdictions [France, Germany, and Mexico], Islamic law jurisdiction [UAE], and a mixed legal jurisdiction [China]. [P. Wood groupings]

– 5. A chart cross referencing all answers, and all answers, were provided– 6. Students were asked to apply comparative law techniques and propose and

support a best rule, including for use in international instruments

Work and materials to date

• Some tentative conclusions about the tutorial were noted by the instructor– Comments on improving the Materials, esp. –

• Need for short black letter summaries of the laws of each jurisdiction• Need to improve quality of some replies, and add Saudi Arabia as a 2nd

Islamic jurisdiction• Need to address some ambiguities in the problem and related

transaction documents– Interesting features of ‘applied comparative law’: different conclusions

from doctrinally similar systems– Importance of economic historical development of each system, thus

linked law and economics and legal history• All the above is being sent herewith

Route forward and next steps

• Core group to review and settle on approach, format, and materials (CCL Materials Working Group)

• Assuming the basic features above are retained, need for others to prepare archetype fact patterns, questions, and documents for –– Payment systems– Transport of goods– Intermediated securities– Dispute resolution

• Objectives to be met by next TCL event, and practicalities based on resource issues

• In due course, assessment of e-book format, modules, updates