NEWSLETTER-2017

6 NEWSLETTER 2017 instruments are not intended for adoption by individual jurisdictions, such as the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts. These are drafted without any structural limitations 7 . Secondly, soft law instruments may be used to guide arbitral tribunals. Principles and restatements are widely used as a basis for forging new legal rules or interpreting existing ones. Moreover, arbi- tral tribunals, which are generally not bound by domestic choices of law, often adopt legal rules, such as the Unidroit Principles of Inter- national Commercial Contracts, because of the presumed neutrality of these rules. Moreover, soft law is often a basis for gap fillers when the otherwise applicable international or domestic law does not address a specific question 8 . Thirdly, parties may choose to adopt specific rules of non-binding instruments that become part of the parties’ agreements by express or implicit adoption. The reasoning behind this is that the parties believe that the rules provide a better reflection of their business relationship, that they are more neutral, and that soft law offers more predictability when compared to the parties’ domestic laws 9 . ICC Model Contracts Definition . As part of the legislative function of lex mercatoria as referred to, above, the ICC has drafted a number of model contracts in contribution to lex mercatoria . These Model Contracts are listed, below: • ICC Model International Sale Contract; ICC publication no. 556; • ICC Model International Franchising Contract; ICC publica- tion no. 557; • ICC Model Occasional Intermediary Contract; ICC publica- tion no. 619; 7 Gabriel, p. 665-667. 8 Gabriel, p. 668. 9 Gabriel, p. 669.