No Waiver of Rights - ISDA Provision

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2002 ISDA Master Agreement

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9(f) in a Nutshell

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9(f) in all its glory

9(f) No Waiver of Rights. A failure or delay in exercising any right, power or privilege in respect of this Agreement will not be presumed to operate as a waiver, and a single or partial exercise of any right, power or privilege will not be presumed to preclude any subsequent or further exercise, of that right, power or privilege or the exercise of any other right, power or privilege.

Related agreements and comparisons

Click here for the text of Section 9(f) in the 1992 ISDA
Click to compare this section in the 1992 ISDA and 2002 ISDA.

Resources and Navigation

This provision in the 1992

Resources Wikitext | Nutshell wikitext | 1992 ISDA wikitext | 2002 vs 1992 Showdown | 2006 ISDA Definitions | 2008 ISDA | JC’s ISDA code project
Navigation Preamble | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Events of Default: 5(a)(i) Failure to Pay or Deliver5(a)(ii) Breach of Agreement5(a)(iii) Credit Support Default5(a)(iv) Misrepresentation5(a)(v) Default Under Specified Transaction5(a)(vi) Cross Default5(a)(vii) Bankruptcy5(a)(viii) Merger without Assumption
Termination Events: 5(b)(i) Illegality5(b)(ii) Force Majeure Event5(b)(iii) Tax Event5(b)(iv) Tax Event Upon Merger5(b)(v) Credit Event Upon Merger5(b)(vi) Additional Termination Event

Index: Click to expand:

Overview

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Nothing to see here, folks: Section 9(f) in the 2002 ISDA is the same as Section 9(f) in the 1992 ISDA.

Summary

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Waiver: a place where the laws of the New World and the Old diverge. Does one really need a contractual provision dealing with the consequences of a fellow’s good-natured indulgence when carrying on commerce under an ISDA Master Agreement? Those with an English qualification will snort, barking reference to Hughes v Metropolitan Railway and say this Section 9(f) is inconsequential fluff that goes without saying; those acquainted with the Uniform Commercial Code and the monstrous slabs of Manhattan will tread more carefully, lest they create a “course of dealing”.

Since the ISDA Master Agreement was designed with either legal system in mind, ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ came up with something that would work in either. To be sure, it is calculated to offend literary stylists and those wholse attention span favours minimalism amongst those who ply their trade in the old country, but it does no harm.

Different approaches to evidence of the contract in the UK and US

England and the US have taken different paths when it comes to respecting the sanctity of that four-cornered document representing the contract. Whereas the parol evidence rule gives the written form a kind of “epistemic priority” over any other articulation of the abstract deal in the common law, in the new world greater regard will be had of how the parties behave when performing their contract, and less significance on what at the outset they wrote down.

So whereas in England action to not insist upon strict contractual rights will have scarce effect on those rights (at best a waiver by estoppel might arise, at least until it is withdrawn[1]), in the United States Uniform Commercial Code[2] a “course of dealing” between the parties at variance with the written terms of their bargain will tend to override those written terms. Thus, by not insisting on the strict terms of her deal, an American risks losing that deal, and will be taken by the course of dealing to have agreed something else; whereas an Englishman, by granting such an indulgence, at worst suspends his strict contractual rights but does not lose them.

In this way the parol evidence rule is less persuasive in American jurisprudence than in British.

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  • The JC’s famous Nutshell summary of this clause

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See also

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Template:M sa 2002 ISDA 9(f)

References