ABSTRACT
Looking to engage in business beyond their own relatively ordered world, exporters fear that the rules by which they presently conduct their affairs will not apply. In the main, their fears are unfounded. Even as they jealously guard their freedoms, inhabitants of any neighborhood surrender considerable autonomy to the collective wisdom, norms, and traditions that preserve, protect, and enhance their fraternity. Likewise, even as nations anxiously avert intrusions into their institutions, they submit to the conventions, customs, and principles that define their relationships to the community of the world's sovereign entities. Each circumstance has yielded a system of law to which individuals and nations adhere. In time, as each state has evolved a legal system derived from its own unique history, culture, and social imperatives, the nations of the world have a collective experience and history that has resulted in a similar evolution of an international system of law. This international system of law is distinct but no less real than its domestic counterparts. Altogether, the assortment of multiple nation-specific systems of law and the international system of law constitute the legal framework through which the exporter must chart a specific course. Thus, it is not the absence of rules but rules that are unfamiliar with which the exporter must contend.
