The League of Nations’ Report on the Unification of the Law of Negotiable Instruments

Extract

The Conference of Financial Experts held at Brussels in September,1920, recommended to the League of Nations as part of its scheme of financial rehabilitation “ that the activities of the League might usefully be directed towards promoting certain reforms,” the first of which was that progress should be made toward the unification of the laws of the various countries relating to bills of exchange and bills of lading. The International Chamber of Commerce and other trade bodies have likewise strongly supported a resumption of initiative in this direction, which was interrupted by the war. As a result, the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, acting in cooperation with the Government of the Netherlands,and with the approval of the Council and the Assembly, appointed four legal experts to report their opinions upon the attitude now prevailing in the various countries of the world toward the work of the two Hague Conferences on Negotiable Instruments and also as to whether further action toward unification was likely to meet with practical success. The following highly qualified experts were charged with the task: Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, well known as the author of the English Bills of Exchange Act of 1882; the late Professor David Josephus Jitta, formerly Councillor of State of the Netherlands; Professor Franz Klein, of Austria, and Professor Lyon-Caen, the well-known French authority on commercial law.