Bibliographie sélective OHADA

Une bonne partie de la doctrine juridique semble admettre le contrat de commerce international comme source du droit. Pourtant, plusieurs éléments pertinents intrinsèques et même extrinsèques au contrat de commerce international conduisent à contester sa qualité de source du droit. En effet, s’il est possible de retenir qu’il crée des normes, celles-ci sont en opposition avec les critères habituels et les spécificités de la loi. En recherchant des critères d’acceptabilité auprès de la jurisprudence, l’arrimage reste difficile notamment en raison de ce que les parties se tourneront souvent vers une juridiction arbitrale qui saura leur garantir la non-diffusion du litige et du contrat ; une recherche de confidentialité et de secret qui n’est pas de nature à susciter la naissance d’une force créatrice du droit. Le rôle d’influenceur de la doctrine s’en voit ainsi compromis puisqu’il faut que le contrat établi soit connu pour que la doctrine veuille, par son influence toucher le législateur à ce propos. Bref, dans l’ordre juridique interne, le contrat de commerce international, est contesté en tant que source du droit. La lex mercatoria ne semble pas non plus porter un meilleur écho à la thèse du contrat de commerce international comme source du droit. D’ailleurs, de nombreuses controverses remettent en cause sa qualité d’ordre juridique. Et si les pratiques contractuelles internationales organisées ou relativement spontanées sont d’une grande richesse inventive, elles ne semblent pas suffisantes pour alimenter une vraie théorie des sources mercatiques. La juridicité de la lex mercatoria étant contestée, il n’est possible d’y trouver une source du droit que dans l’hypothèse d’une juridicité propre à la lex mercatoria. Et l’émancipation de la lex mercatoria par rapport à l’ordre juridique national et international semble se confirmer.

This chapter deals with the principle of direct effect as applied in European Union law and explores its suitability in the enforcement of African Union (AU) legal instruments, notably those setting up the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). What motivates the issue of direct effect is the noted reticence of African countries to litigate trade matters between themselves despite the existence of provisions of regional trade treaties creating courts of justice which give standing to Member States. Therefore, it surveys the avenues through which natural and legal persons can uphold their rights stemming from AfCFTA treaties thus contributing to treaty interpretation and increasing security and predictability. Currently, the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Protocol, modelled after the WTO, does not allow such a possibility, contrary to rights acquired by natural and legal persons before some African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) courts. Nevertheless, this chapter finds that carving out access of natural and legal persons to AfCFTA proceedings may not always work as intended since there are other ways to bypass these obstacles. These loopholes could be the gateway through which direct effect will develop and become a principle of AU law broadly speaking. These gaps further complement this chapter’s suggestions to explore amending the AfCFTA legal instruments, even though its dispute settlement system is yet to be tested, in order to match the standing that natural and legal persons have acquired under the RECs, which, in fine, are building blocs towards achieving the AfCFTA and, eventually, the African Economic Community.

In the more recent decades, international investment law (“iil”) and arbitration have been going through a process of recalibration prompted by both the intensification of cross-border capital flows and the States’ growing concerns over the potential restraints iil may impose upon the pursuit of public interests. The present contribution will pay attention to a specific feature that can be observed within these developments, i.e. the role played by soft law in investment arbitration and, more generally, under iil, also with a view to assessing the impact on the formation of binding international law of instruments formally devoid of normative force within the international legal order. After an introduction (Section 1), the contribution is articulated into four sections. Section 2 will first define the field of investigation. The case law of investment tribunals and the treaty practice under the more recent iia s will be then explored as to the reliance on soft law instruments for the purposes of settling procedural (Section 3) and substantive issues (Section 4). Some final remarks will close (Section 5).

The UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration provides for the extension of the mandate of the arbitral tribunal post issuance of the final award for the issuance of correction, interpretation, additional award, and remittance of the award back to the arbitral tribunal to remove grounds for challenging the award. Using a doctrinal approach, this paper examines the deviations of the national laws of adopting jurisdictions from the Model Law in regards to this extended mandate, and evaluates the improvements and drawbacks in these deviations. Mainly, the findings of this paper are that, of the many deviations, the positive changes are those that provide comfortable and lenient default provisions for the benefit of inexperienced parties, and since correction, interpretation, additional award, and remittance are useful provisions that are designed to help self-rectify the arbitral process, without adversely delaying it, then the changes that increase the efficacy of these provisions are welcomed. On the other hand, unnecessary deviations are seen as drawbacks that hinder the harmonization of national arbitration laws aimed at by the Model Law. The adopting jurisdictions shall be limited to those acknowledged as such by the UNCITRAL.

Le principe de proportionnalité a été récemment reconnu dans les traités et les accords internationaux du commerce et des investissements avec l’État. Cependant, peu d'études se concentrent sur la nature juridique, le contenu, la portée et les fonctions de ce principe dans le droit économique international. Cette thèse présente une analyse actuelle et détaillée sur ces questions.

This study examines the comparative impact of multilateral trade agreements on intra-regional trade in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regions in Africa. Annual data was gathered from 2000 to 2018 and dynamic panel data and econometric techniques were used to control for individual country characteristics, endogeneity, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity and interdependencies between the countries in each region. Two estimations were done, one using the tariff measures of multilateral agreements, the second using non-tariff measures of multilateral agreement. The results of the empirical analysis show that the SADC region has a slight edge over ECOWAS in terms of technological progress and investment, especially in trade infrastructure. However, the ECOWAS levels of employment and economic growth are higher than those in the SADC region. These differences further translate into differences that drive intra-African trade in these regions, and how they relate to the role of multilateral agreements in intra-African trade in each of these regions. While technology and investment are key drivers and enhancers of intra-African trade in SADC countries, economic growth and employment stand out as key enhancers of intra-African trade in ECOWAS, especially where multilateral agreement is represented by tariff measures. This study reports that when non-tariff measures are used to represent multilateral agreements, export trade costs, in addition to investment and technology, are the key drivers of intra-African trade in SADC countries. For ECOWAS, under non-tariff measures of multilateral agreements, only economic growth drives intra-African trade.

The sub-Saharan African region is characterized by a high relative degree of openness to trade. The region is also identified with increased inflows of foreign investments with no significant welfare improvement. Economic development emphasizes that the lack of domestic investment in the developing economies could be boosted by trade openness and inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for impactful enhancement of capital formation. In this article, the impact of trade openness and foreign capital inflow on economic welfare was examined on a sub-regional analysis for sub-Saharan Africa. The study also appraised the effect of openness to trade and FDI inflow on the region's economic welfare. The data for 30 countries from 2000 to 2018 were collected and analyzed, with the Generalized Least Square (GLS) technique to fit the model developed. The study showed that openness to trade has a significant impact on economic welfare for all sub-Saharan Africa regions, while FDI is only significant for the Western sub-region. Hence, the study recommends that the government of the countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region should boost trade openness to enhance efficiency in productivity, and improve industrial development.

Uluslararası ticaretin gelişimi ve artması dünyadaki bütün devletler tarafından hedeflenen bir amaçtır. Ancak devletlerin ulusal hukuk sistemleri arasındaki farklar bu gelişim için belirli engeller oluşturmaktadır. Bu engelleri aşmak için uluslararası ticaret hukukunun yeknesaklaştırılması, yani aynı uluslararası hukuki işleme uygulanacak iki veya daha çok ulusal hukuk sisteminin farklı kurallarının bir kuralla değiştirilmesi çare olarak görülmektedir. Bu amaçla şimdiye kadar bir çok çalışmalar yapılmış ve bir çok yeknesaklaştırma aracı ortaya konulmuştur. Uluslararası ticaret hukukunun bel kemiğini oluşturan uluslararası ticari sözleşmeler alanında hazırlanmış olan yeknesaklaştırma araçları ise bu bakımdan özellikle önem taşımaktadır. Hukukun yeknesaklaştırılması alanında çalışmalar sürdürülmekle birlikte bu konuya şüpheyle bakanlar ve yeknesaklaştırmanın kendi amacına ulaşamayacağını düşünenler de mevcuttur. Bu yeknesaklaştırma sürecinde ortaya çıkan bir takım sorunlarla ilgilidir. Ancak özellikle de uluslararası ticaret hukuku alanında yapılan yeknesaklaştırma çalışmalarında elde edilen başarılar umut vaat etmektedir. Uluslararası ticari sözleşmeler hukuku alanında yapılmış olan ayrı ayrı yeknesaklaştırma çalışmaları ile ilgili araştırmalar mevcut olsa da, konuyu daha kapsamlı bir şekilde ele alan ve meseleye daha geniş bir perspektiften bakan araştırmaların eksik olduğunu görmekteyiz. Özellikle de Türkiye'de bu tür araştırmalarda bir boşluğun mevcut olduğu hissedilmektedir. Uluslararası ticari sözleşmeler hukukunun yeknesaklaştırılması amacıyla ortaya konulmuş çalışmaların ve hazırlanmış olan araçların daha kapsamlı bir şekilde araştırılması, onların sağladığı faydaları göstermek, bu alanda ortaya çıkan sorunları belirlemek ve gerekli çözüm önerileri sunmak açısından önem arz etmektedir. Bütün bunları dikkate alarak biz bu araştırmamızda uluslararası ticaret hukukunun yeknesaklaştırılması kavramını, onun önemini ve sağladığı avantajları, yeknesaklaştırmanın gerçekleştirilmesi yöntemlerini, uluslararası ticaret hukukunun yeknesaklaştırılması alanında çalışmalar yapan ve bu sürece katkıda bulunan uluslararası kurumları, uluslararası ticari sözleşmeler alanında yapılmış olan ve şu an yapılmakta olan çalışmaları, bu konuyla ilgili ortaya çıkan sorunları ve bu sorunların ortadan kaldırılması için sunulan çözüm önerilerini incelemeye çalıştık. [...] The development and growth of international trade is an aim targeted by all states in the world. However, the differences between the national legal systems of states pose certain obstacles to this development. To overcome these obstacles, the unification of the international commercial law is considered a remedy, that is, changing the different rules of two or more national legal systems to be applied to the same international legal process with one rule. For this purpose, so far many studies have been done and many unification instruments have been introduced. The unification instruments prepared in the field of the international commercial contracts, which form the backbone of international commercial law, are particularly important in this regard. Although studies on the unification of the law continues, there are also those who are skeptical about this issue and those who think that it cannot achieve its own goal. It concerns a number of problems that arise in the process of unification. However, the successes achieved in the unification studies especially in the field of international commercial law promise hope. Although there are researches on individual unification studies in the field of international commercial contracts law, we see that there is a lack of research that covers the issue more extensively and looks at the issue from a wider perspecitve. Especially, a vacancy in this kind of research is available in Turkey. It is important to investigate the studies and the instruments that have been prepared for the purpose of the unification of the international commercial contracts law, to show their benefits, to identify the problems that arise in this field and to offer necessary solutions. Considering all these, in this research, we tried to examine the concept of the unification of the international commercial law, its importance and advantages, the methods of realization of unification, the international institutions that work in the field of the unification of the international commercial law and contribute to this process, the problems that arise about this issue and the proposed solutions to eliminate these problems.

In this essay, we describe the overlapping phenomena of new legal hubs (NLHs), international commercial courts, and arbitral courts. We survey their impact on the law and geopolitics of international commercial dispute resolution, identifying key issues these new dispute resolution institutions raise. While the rise of international commercial courts spans authoritarian and liberal states, Western and Asian states, common law and civil law traditions, it also highlights and builds upon regional differences. We question the assumption that the establishment of new courts is always consistent with an increase in the rule of law, particularly in non-democratic states. We close with thoughts about the potential influence and future role of these institutions. Some of the procedural innovations discussed here may lead to shifts in international commercial dispute resolution for years to come, but the question of whether there is sufficient demand for these new institutions lingers.