This article examines whether standards, public or private, concerning conformity of goods should influence the interpretation of sales contracts and of the terms implied in sales law. It organises the thus far disparate discussions about standards within one framework and develops criteria and factors for understanding and analysing the complex interaction between sales law and standards. The examination is carried out in the context of several common law systems and the UN Sales Convention. The article also argues that the experience of sales law in respect of standards and the discourse of standards outside it would benefit from engaging with each other.

Standards are a pervasive feature of modern life. Most products today have some corresponding standard(s) concerning a product’s composition, features, such as health and safety, or the process to be followed in making it. The standards are numerous, having different origins, ownership, character and functions. Some of them are adopted by states and often contained in public law regulations (“public” standards). Other standards are “private”, in the sense that they are produced by non-state bodies and organisations. These standards have proliferated greatly in the last two decades and play an important role in governing various aspects of goods and their production processes. This proliferation of standards has generated much discussion in legal and non-legal scholarship that addresses many aspects of standards, including their nature, content, functions, systematisation and classification, the relationship between private and public standards, their role in governing product quality and processes and their function of “regulating” global supply chains.