A few notes on the evolution of the commercial sales contract regulation

• Author: Dan Velicu
• Position: Lecturer PhD, Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences, 'Nicolae Titulescu' University of Bucharest (e-mail: dan.velicu@univnt.ro).
• Pages: 7-14

LESIJ NO. XXII, VOL. 2/2015

A FEW NOTES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE

COMMERCIAL SALES CONTRACT REGULATION

Dan VELICU*

Abstract

Today, we think that the commercial sales has a long history as institution and therefore the

relocation of its regulation from the commercial code to the civil code seems to be an authentic

revolution inside the European or national private law.

In fact, the modern regulation of commercial sales emerged only in the nineteenth century and a

proper regulation was strengthened in that very century.

The present paper aims to analyze if this kind of revolution is an useful and necessary and if, by

relocation, the institution has really disappeared.

Keywords: commercial sales contract, commercial law, comparative legal history, civil code,

codification.

1. Introduction

As we know the sales contract was and

is the most useful contract in social material

transactions.

For some centuries, during the Dark

Ages, when the barter was the main

transactional activity, the sales seemed to be

only a variety of it. However, at the end of

the Middle Age, when the monetized

economy emerged and the necessities of coin

were covered by the discovery of the gold in

the Americas, the prevalence of the sales

contract was assumed.

From that time up today, nothing

proved to be a challenge to the sales contract

and the barter became more and more a sign

of backwardness, economic liability,

peripheral region or economic crisis.

As we shall see, the commercial sales

contract has acquired a specific profile and

regulation during the nineteenth century, but

can we consider it today – when most of the

material changes suppose in fact a

 Lecturer PhD, Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences, “Nicolae Titulescu” University of Bucharest (e-

mail: dan.velicu@univnt.ro).

commercial sales contract – as a specific

contract which needs a special regulation? If

the special hipothesis turned into a general

one, do we still need a special regulation

contained in a commercial code?

Therefore, it seems not to be so bizarre

to renounce to all these commercial codes

which belong to the past and to the social

stratification of the industrialization era.

On the contrary to this common

opinion, I think that the distinction between

civil and commercial law deserves, at least, a

summary analisys, and the recent evolutions

inside the private law suggest that reality has

to prevail on the ideology or on the obsessive

ideea to revolutionize the law.

2. The first phase: neglecting the

commercial sales contract.

At t he end of the eighteenth century

or, at least at the beginning of the nineteenth

century, the sales contract was accepted as