Introduction

Immediately upon recognizing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on international trade and investment, Transnational Dispute Management put out a call for papers in March 2020 on those consequences for cross-border transactions and dispute resolution. The spread of COVID-19 has led to numerous cancellations, suspensions and performance challenges in international transactions, in addition to the crucial health concerns. Legal doctrines such as force majeure, changes in circumstances, hardship, impracticality, impossibility, frustration and the like have been implicated. Differing jurisdictions have adopted differing doctrines, both between common law and civil law systems and within those systems as well. Those differences can create outcome-determinative controversies, particularly in international disputes. We are pleased to have advance published a full set of papers addressing these issues nationally and globally. We now collect those papers in our Special Issue. Our thanks to the authors for their excellent work. We hope that you, the TDM readers, find this Special Issue worth your attention.

Mark Kantor
Editor-in-Chief, TDM