PRIVATE COMMERCIAL LAW CONVENTIONS AND PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE RADICAL APPROACH OF THE CAPE TOWN CONVENTION 2001 AND ITS PROTOCOLS

It is a remarkable circumstance that with a few honourable exceptions all writers on international law in general and treaty law in particular focus exclusively on public law treaties. Private law conventions, including those involving commercial law and the conflict of laws, simply do not come into consideration. Yet such conventions, like public law conventions, are treaties between States and are governed by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and many of them are of great significance. Their distinguishing feature is, of course, that while only States are parties, private law conventions deal primarily, and often exclusively, with the rights and obligations of non-State parties. So while the treaty is international it does not for the most part commit a Contracting State to any obligation other than that of implementing the treaty in domestic law by whatever method that State's law provides, if it has not already done so prior to ratification.