Transnational Commercial Law and Impediments to its Development

This is the seventh lecture of the QM-UNIDROIT ITCL Advisory Board lecture series presented by Sir Roy Goode

The QM-UNIDROIT Institute for Transnational Commercial Law (ITCL), co-directed by Professor Anna Veneziano and Professor Rosa Lastra, has launched the QM-UNIDROIT Lecture Series coordinated by Dr Kamala Dawar. It will run from mid-October 2025 until December 2026 and beyond. The aim of the lecture series is to share the wide expertise of the Advisory Board along with the indispensable role of UNIDROIT in the harmonisation of transnational commercial law. The in-person lectures will be followed by a networking opportunity at CCLS to allow for further discussions and interactions.

More about the speaker:

Professor Sir Roy Goode CBE QC FBA is Emeritus Professor of Law in the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He was formerly the Crowther Professor of Credit and Commercial Law at Queen Mary, University of London, where he was the founder and first director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies. The author of many widely used textbooks in the field of commercial law, including Commercial Law, Principles of Corporate Insolvency Law and Legal Problems of Credit and Security. Sir Goode, a former solicitor, moved to the Bar in 1988 and was appointed Queen's Counsel two years later. He was awarded the CBE in 1993 and was knighted in 2000 for his services to academic law. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds the degrees of LLD (Lond.) and DCL (Oxon), as well as honorary doctorates from the Universities of London and East Anglia and from the College of Law (now the University of Law). His international reputation is reflected in a series of prestigious visiting appointments at leading universities including Melbourne, Monash, Osgoode Hall, Hamburg, Harvard, Utrecht and the University of Pennsylvania. Beyond the academy, he chaired major national and international committees — including the Pension Law Review Committee and the ICC Commission on International Commercial Practice — and served on bodies such as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the London Court of International Arbitration and multiple governmental and professional committees. A long-standing member (and later Honorary Member) of the Governing Council of UNIDROIT, he contributed significantly to the development of international commercial law, including through the European Contract Law Commission and the UNIDROIT Principles. He has played a leading role in the development and conclusion of a number of international Conventions and Protocols, and is the author of the three Official Commentaries on the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and its associated Protocols on aircraft objects, railway rolling stock and space assets.