International commercial contracts form the legal infrastructure of cross-border trade, yet they are too often approached through fragmented domestic lenses. In this book, Julien Chaisse offers a clear and globally oriented account of how international contracts are formed, structured, and enforced across jurisdictions and provides a structured conceptual framework for international commercial contracts, coupled with pragmatic guidance, while resisting the tendency to universalise any one national law as the default point of reference. This comparative method fits the Edward Elgar Advanced Introductions series, which seeks to connect academic clarity with the operational realities of cross-border legal practice.

The book is organised in three substantive parts. This architecture is both conceptually coherent and pedagogically calibrated: the 12 chapters map neatly onto a standard semester’s lecture sequence, making the text easy to adopt for instructors and manageable for students. Part I sets out the foundations of commercial contracts, beginning with the concept and formation of commercial contracts and moving to the critical issue of governing law. Chaisse adopts a comparative perspective, highlighting how party autonomy operates within different legal traditions and how legal certainty is pursued through deliberate law selection. The discussion remains accessible, while avoiding excessive simplification.

Part II examines the resolution of disputes arising from international commercial contracts. Chapters 5 to 8 analyse dispute resolution clauses, arbitration, litigation before national courts, and the emergence of hybrid courts. Arbitration is treated as a dominant mechanism, particularly in light of the New York Convention, but the analysis avoids presenting it as a universal solution. The inclusion of litigation and hybrid forums usefully reflects the diversity of contemporary practice. This part demonstrates the author’s sensitivity to procedural context and enforcement realities, rather than treating dispute resolution as a purely technical choice.

Part III turns to the structuring and refinement of contracts. Chapters 9 to 11 focus on negotiation strategy, risk allocation, and the drafting of key clauses, including force majeure, hardship, penalty, and liquidated damages provisions. The treatment of contract integrity through partial nullity and non-waiver clauses reinforces the book’s emphasis on resilience and enforceability. The concluding chapter reiterates the need for adaptability in light of technological change, regulatory developments, and sustainability considerations.

Perhaps the book’s most distinctive achievement is to treat international commercial contracting as a genuinely transnational practice, rather than as an export of English or US doctrine with occasional comparative asides. Chaisse draws attention to economic, cultural, and regulatory factors that shape contractual outcomes, without losing sight of doctrinal coherence. Chaisse moves beyond the traditional common and civil law divide by engaging with a broad range of legal systems, including Chinese commercial practice and other non-Western jurisdictions. The discussion of digital contracting, artificial intelligence, and sustainability requirements is concise but timely, signalling areas where traditional contract analysis must evolve. That said, the breadth of the book occasionally comes at the expense of analytical depth. Although Part II addresses the rise of hybrid courts, the discussion would have been strengthened by closer engagement with hybrid commercial institutions, such as the China International Commercial Court and the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts. A future edition could build on this strong foundation by offering a more sustained, comparative discussion of flagship international commercial courts so that readers can better appreciate how jurisdictional design and enforcement pathways differ across these newer fora.

In sum, Chaisse supplies something that has been largely missing from the field: a disciplined, comparative account of international contracting that avoids collapsing transnational practice into English or US categories. Its integration of contract formation, choice of law, dispute resolution, and drafting positions the book as both a structured point of entry for undergraduate and postgraduate study and a continuing reference for scholars and practitioners.