Doctrine of hardship under the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, Comparative Analysis

The present thesis is dedicated to the issue of the possibility of adaptation of the contract in the case of changed circumstances. The main aim of the present work is focused on resolving the contradiction between the possibility to adapt a contract in case of changed circumstances (the doctrine of hardship) and the principle of pacta sunt servanda, which establishes an obligation to perform initial contractual provisions. To resolve this issue, the attention is paid to two main objectives. Firstly, it is needed to use comparative analysis on various views towards the doctrine of hardship in national and international legislations. However, from the result of the research, the author of the present work concluded that the doctrine of hardship is not settled well in the explicit legislation, since some of its provisions are highly subjective and require interpretation. Consequently, the second main objective of the present work is to make an attempt to unify the approach towards the doctrine of hardship and present single criteria. For this it is important to analyze case practice and deduce how the approach of the courts to the possibility of a contract adaptation has been transforming and how courts justify this possibility without violating the principle of pacta sunt servanda. As a result, the present work is divided into three parts. The first chapter seeks to analyze various views towards the doctrine of hardship in domestic legislations. The second chapter is aimed at the analysis of the existing approach in the international legislation and includes an attempt to unify its interpretations. The third chapter discuss the difference in approaches towards the doctrine of hardship in international legislation. In conclusion the explanation of how the principle of pacta sunt servanda and the doctrine of hardship correlate is provided.