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
OVERVIEW
Comparative Commercial Law Project
(Commercial Law Centre, HMC, Oxford)
Courses
Objectives
Transaction / Doing
Business /
Lawyering
Comparative
Commercial Law
Transnational
Commercial Law
Understanding
Commercial
Transactions
Substantive and
Comparative
Commercial Law
Extracting General
Principles of
Commercial Law
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
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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
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•
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 –
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–
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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