The contract freedom leads to a wide range of liability related clauses in the international commercial contracts, created in function of the respective economic power and negotiations skills of the parties. Legislators all over the world have made active interventions in the field of this kind of clauses; judges have been found in all jurisdictions to declare liability related clauses unenforceable, on the basis of mandatory provisions of domestic law. In the present article we have analyzed the specific features and the conditions of the validity of the penalty clauses, as a the conventional method of assessing damages caused by breach of the contract, in various legal systems and instruments of uniform law.
