What does the transnationalisation of the commercial contract mean? Is there a new model and are there minimum standards? Is there a law and economics perspective?

The subject of this contribution is the model of the professional contract as it increasingly must operate in the international flows of goods, services, money, information and technology, which flows are now far larger than any domestic ones as manifested in particular in international supply, production and distribution chains and in international finance. Legally to continue to require the cutting up of those flows and the transactions therein into domestic pieces in the hope that they together present a proper legal framework for these economically integrated activities is no longer rational if only because these domestic laws were never made for them. The challenge is to describe and explain the new contract (and property) model that so emerges, and the sources of law that become applicable, their balancing in the international market place by considerations of justice, social peace and efficiency if sufficiently pressing, and ultimately by public order consideration at that level. This is perceived here as the greatest challenge in the legal transnationalisation process of commerce and finance in these flows and of the professional dealings and related contracts operating therein.