Foreword

Abstract

The full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be felt long after the last lockdowns have ended. It affected almost every aspect of our lives. The seventh Annual
International Mercantile Law Conference at the University of the Free State was no exception. Initially scheduled to take place in November 2021, it had to be postponed to the next year because of the pandemic. Arranging meetings from the vaccination queues and ending emails with “stay safe and well” marked the planning for the conference. In South Africa, an adjusted alert level 1 was in place from 1 October 2021 to 4 April 2022. When the conference finally took place in November 2022, it was a reunion of academics from all over who contributed and participated with newfound energy and perspective. Even
though it did not explicitly form part of the call for papers, the question that was on everyone’s minds was how to address ourselves in the current context. How do we teach differently, write differently, and think differently in the wake of a pandemic which had far-reaching financial implications at all scales: the domestic, the national and international, and undoubtedly had a lasting impact on the field of Mercantile Law? In this special edition, we bring together contributions that had their genesis at this very conference, and our hope is that, given their origin, they will spark a fresh way of thinking.