Leader: Professor Jenny Hamilton

Offered

City (Melbourne) Term 4 2008 (On-campus block of classes)

Synopsis

This course is built around four main topics:

1. the International Trade of Goods including the contracts for sale, transport and financing of goods to and from Australia;
2. entry into a foreign market through the mechanisms of distributionship, agency, franchising, licensing and technology transfer;
3. impediments to a regulation of international trade - the impact of the GATT/WTO and,
4. international dispute resolution - negotiation, mediation, litigation and arbitration.

Objectives

Students who successfully complete this unit should have:

1. an awareness of the kinds of legal problems that arise from international commercial transactions;
2. acquired an understanding of how the law of sale of goods, negotiable instruments, carriage of goods, and dispute settlement is affected when goods cross national boundaries;
3. a familiarity with the principal mechanisms that trading parties use to resolve or reduce those problems;
4. an appreciation of contemporary issues in Australia's international trading relationships;
5. an awareness of the ways in which government controls of various kinds may affect private international commercial transactions; and
6. a broad knowledge of how the general problems of international trade operate in selected specific areas.

Assessment

Research assignment (3,750 words): 50%
Take home examination (3,750 words): 50%

Contact hours

Intensive