Anglo-American Contract Models and Norwegian or other Civil Law Governing Law 

The background is the well-known practice to adopt English or US contract models even to regulate relationships that are governed by another law. English or US contract models are structured and contain clauses so that they can meet the requirements set by systems of Common Law. When these contract models are used to regulate relationships governed by a Civil Law system, difficulties in interpretation may arise, since Civil Law systems have different requirements.

The function of specific types of clauses will be analysed in the original (primarily English) legal system. We will verify whether the same clause can satisfactorily exercise that function if the contract is governed by another legal system (primarily Norwegian law).

We will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on contractual clauses that are to be found in most contract models, irrespective of the type of transaction that is regulated (so-called "boilerplate clauses"). Examples of clauses to be examined are: Representations and warranties, indemnification, hardship, interpretation, no oral amendments, no waiver.

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Financing - Project period

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The Research Council of Norway financed two PhD research fellows (doktorgradstipendiater) and one undergraduate student per year (for a total of 4 undergraduate students). The law firm DLA Nordic initiated in the academic year 2002-2003 a yearly scholarship for one undergraduate student to write a thesis in International Commercial Law. The subject-matter of the project was the core of the programme of the course on International Commercial Law that is being taught at the Oslo University, therefore our project will benefit of the financing by DLA Nordic.

External funds financed also some undergraduate students in the field of maritime insurance.