The Cape Town Convention Academic Project

Directors of this project are Professor Jeffrey Wool, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford and Secretary-General of the Aviation Working Group; Professor Louise Gullifer, Rouse Ball Professor of English Law, University of Cambridge; and Professor Ignacio Tirado, Secretary General of UNIDROIT. Professor Sir Roy Goode, Emeritus Professor of Law in the Univeristy of Oxford and Rob Cowan, Managing Director of Aviareto Ltd are Senior Advisors. The project has been funded by the Aviation Working Group since July 2011. 

The purpose of this project is to facilitate the academic study and assessment of the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (the Cape Town Convention), together with its Protocols, for the benefit of scholars, practising lawyers, courts and governments. 

The Cape Town Convention Academic Project is a joint undertaking between UNIDROIT and the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law. The Commercial Law Centre is affiliated with the project. Its purpose is to facilitate the academic study and assessment of the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (the Cape Town Convention), together with its Protocols, for the benefit of scholars, practising lawyers, courts and governments. The Cape Town Convention is one of the most important and innovative international conventions ever to have been concluded in the field of transnational commercial law and already has 65 Contracting States. The project seeks to enhance the understanding and effective implementation of the treaty and advance its aims.

Information about the Cape Town Convention can be found on the websites of UNIDROIT, the legal depository of the treaty, and the Aviation Working Group, the founding sponsor of the project.

The main activities of the project are: the creation of a comprehensive digitized and searchable database of primary and secondary materials on the Convention and Protocols, the preparatory work leading to their adoption, and their implementation in national law, a journal, conferences, teaching materials, and law and economics assessment. The database ( http://www.ctcap.org/ ) and journal are being undertaken under the joint auspices of UNIDROIT. The Aviation Working Group is the founding sponsor of the project. The International Civil Aviation Organization and the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail are also cooperating with the project.

The project seeks to draw out and assess general principles and themes seen in the broader context of transnational commercial law, such as the relationship between commercial law reform and economic benefit, the relationship between international and national law, the interplay between private law and public law and the use of a system of opt-in and opt-out declarations to provide flexibility in the application of provisions so as to respect national sensitivities, and the role of electronic commerce, including the use of electronic registries.