The traditional and still prevailing approach to “nationalize” cross-border transactions and to subject them to the law of a particular country as if they were purely domestic contracts, may be criticized for a number of reasons. The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts – the most important soft law instrument in the field of general contract law, first published in 1994 and now in their fourth edition (2016) – could constitute a valid alternative to the traditional State-law centred conflictof-laws approach. Yet why is it that, despite the widely acknowledged intrinsic merits of the UNIDROIT Principles, their relevance in practice is still rather limited? The Author, after pointing out that the main reason for the continuing dominance of national laws is the inherent conservatism, coupled with a good deal of provincialism, of the legal profession, shows that nonetheless there exist significant “market niches” that the UNIDROIT Principles may, and actually do, fill with considerable success.

中文翻译：

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管辖国际商事合同的法律和统法协会原则的实际作用

将跨境交易“国有化”并将其按照特定国家的法律作为纯粹的国内合同的传统和仍然流行的方法可能会因多种原因而受到批评。UNIDROIT 国际商事合同原则——一般合同法领域最重要的软法律文书，于 1994 年首次出版，现在是第四版（2016 年）——可以成为传统的以国家法为中心的冲突的有效替代——法方法。然而，为什么尽管 UNIDROIT 原则的内在优点得到广泛承认，但它们在实践中的相关性仍然相当有限？作者在指出国家法律继续占主导地位的主要原因是固有的保守主义，加上大量的地方主义之后，