From Acorn to Oak Tree: the Development of the Cape Town Convention and Protocols

The preparation of any international uniform law is a long and arduous business. The Cape Town project began as a relatively modest venture on a proposal made in June 1988 by Mr T.B. Smith QC, the Canadian member of the UNIDROIT Governing Council, to build on the UNIDROIT Convention on International Financial Leasing, which had been adopted the same year, and prepare an instrument focused on mobile equipment but otherwise broader in scope than the Leasing Convention. The new instrument would deal with security interests in mobile equipment, covering not only security in the traditional sense but also the interests of conditional sellers and lessors. Now experience over the years has shown the vital importance of establishing three key factors before embarking on a project of uniform law. First, is there a problem? That may seem an obvious question but I can recall the time when UNIDROIT was very much influenced by academics – which, of course, is an excellent thing, there can never be too many academics – and the Governing Council had on its work programme a large range of projects most of which had appeared in the programme because a member of the Governing Council had had a bright idea! The existence of a problem was assumed to arise simply from differences in national laws. That rather happygo-lucky approach was long ago abandoned, and the Governing Council will