My recent posts about the status of the CISG and CUECIC and the possible CISG implications of the McDonald's glassware recall sent me, as is almost always the case when I want to refresh my recollection of CISG text or catch up on recent cases and commentary, to the Pace Law School Institute of International Commercial Law's expansive, free, and always helpful online CISG Database.Revisiting the site yesterday, I read the sad news that Albert H. Kritzer, the Institute's founder and godfather of the CISG Database, passed away June 1, while in Egypt to receive the 2010 Arab Conference for Commercial and Maritime Law Career Achievement Award. Pace Law School's notice, including comments from Dean Michelle Simon, is available here.
I met Al Kritzer only once, and briefly, in person, during a break in a conference at Pace Law School that his colleague Jim Fishman hosted commemorating Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon. However, Al and I corresponded (mostly by e-mail) and he was kind enough to introduce me (again, via e-mail) to Joseph Lookofsky (another CISG luminary) and to introduce much of the domestic and international CISG community (via the CISG Database) to my work analyzing the then-entire corpus of published U.S. CISG case law in the chapter on the CISG that I comprehensively revised and greatly expanded a few years ago for Howard O. Hunter's Modern Law of Contracts. Al subsequently invited me to contribute substantive case commentaries to the CISG Database, in which I have been largely remiss for a variety of reasons. I hope that his successor will allow me to honor Al's invitation -- and his life's work.
