Legal customs and the lex mercatoria in international private maritime law

The article deals with the problem of unification of international private maritime law, by virtue of private self regulation (lex mercatoria). After a general introduction, the second chapter deals with the underpinnings of the so called lex mercatoria, focusing on the customs in international private maritime law and on their application to the international disputes. The third chapter breafly outlines the nature of maritime law as a mixed legal system in the aim of explaining the high possibility of application of international trade customs in maritime law. Finally, the third chapter contains a review of English and Italian cases dealing with the application of customs in international trasnsport. The conclusion is that the disputes about lex mercatoria are not only a scholar's rhetoric exercise, but the fruit of a policentric vision of sources of law and that lex mercatoria, intended as a set of international legal customs, has been part of international maritime law, under various names.