From Lex Mercatoria to Transnational Commercial Law in Proper Sense

With expansion of transactional commercial arbitrations in the 20th century, the Theory of ‘Transactional Commercial Law’ presented by lawyers such as Gladman and Schmitthoff. This theory was based on the claim that there is a third Legal system along with public international law system and national law system in order to adjust transnational commercial relations. There is no consensus in legal doctrine about the sense, nature and other issues about transnational commercial law and there are ambiguities in studying it. Considering the history of transnational commercial rules, some authors consider this new legal system equivalent to Lex Mercatoria whereas Lex Mercatoria has never had a fixed sense and has developed over time. This article is a desk research and descriptive-analytical research. It studies and assesses the evolution process of Lex Mercatoria and also clarifies the relationship between Lex Mercatoria and Transnational Commercial Law and finally, this study concludes that it is not possible to define pure Lex Mercatoria, i.e without specifying characteristic such as classical, modern, and post-modern, as the synonym of pure Transnational Commercial Law (including broadest sense and Proper sense).