Transnational Commercial Law and Lex Mercatoria: In Place of Each Other or Along with Each Other?

The expressions «lex mercatoria» and «transnational commercial law» are often used in the literature of international commercial law as synonymous and interchangeable concepts. Arguing the fallacy of this approach, the author delineates these categories on the basis of a comparative analysis of the corresponding theoretical concepts, normative acts and examined the significance of each of the legal complexes under consideration. The paper justifies that in normative terms lex mercatoria consists of general principles of law and unwritten international trade customs. Such regulators are formed spontaneously in cross-border commercial practice, and their identification is of some complexity. Transnational commercial law includes specified unwritten sources attributed to lex mercatoria. At the same time, it also includes written sources created by the deliberate efforts of non-state actors, namely: international conventions and treaties (for example, the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods of 1980), acts of international private law unification with generally recognized normative force (Principles of International Commercial Treaties of UNIDROIT, Incoterms, Unified Rules and Customs for Documentary Letters of Credit, etc.), recommendation documents created by international organizations and communities of merchants that are not characterized by regularity (model laws, guidelines, recommendations, model terms of contracts, reservations, etc.); international commercial arbitration practice and doctrine. Sources of transnational commercial law can be represented in the form of a hierarchical structure, with the general principles of law at the top. The elements of the structure (sources of transnational commercial law) are in close cooperation and affect each other.

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