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
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