General Principles of Law; the Contact Point of Transnational Commercial Law and International Law

The "General Principles of law" have always been the important source of transnational commercial law that their scope has expanded in line with the development of transnational law, so that today it embodies two types, including "common principles" between legal systems and "specific principles" of international trade. In international law, "General principles of law" as norms that are rooted in national legal systems, obtained through "comparative" studies by international judges and in accordance with Article 38 of the ICJ statute, they are source of international law. Because of their "supranational character" and "dual nature" that stemming from their fundamental personality, these principles have the potential to be present in any legal system, including transnational commercial law. They enter into transnational commercial law through "comparative" method and “codification-based” method; thus, to resolve transnational commercial disputes, the arbitrators are using common principles as result of the studies of international judges. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the role of "general principles of law" in linking transnational law to international law and to this end, the "nature" of the general principles and their “entrance” in transnational law are discussed by analyzing the theories and arbitral awards. The finding of this paper is that the general principles of transnational commercial law are the same general principles of law which recognized by civilized nations as source of international law; these have been entered into transnational commercial law by the actors of international law and in the accepted forms of international law.