[Swizec]

Sidepoint: ALL contracts I've ever signed, both in Europe and in US, and across oceans, have a clause that says "If anything in this contract was missed or is in violation of the law, the law prevails. The contract is ruled by laws of X country"

And really, both here and there, contracts are treated more like guidelines than actual rules. What you agree on with a handshake matters far more. Especially with contracts under 5 figures because enforcing them would be way too much hassle and in case anything goes wrong it's easier to just write them off as cost-of-doing-business and move on.

[mpweiher]

have a clause that says "If anything in this contract was missed or is in violation of the law, the law prevails. The contract is ruled by laws of X country"

Yeah, I've also seen this in many contracts. It's silly. The law prevails whether you write it in the damn contract or not. That's why it's The Law. (You can also try the opposite test: "If anything in this contract is in violation of the law, this contract prevails over the law" --> yeah, right)

[mortov]

It's not really silly at all. It is there for two reasons.

(1) The law requries it to be stated in contracts [at least partially because of (2) below].

(2) Case law develops and can mean that something in a contract was previously enforceable but due to a test case or other development, it is no longer enforceable. Rather than companies having to watch every test case go through the courts and have lawyers rewrite contracts every few weeks just in case something needs updated, the catch-all allows for a more reasonable update cycle with rewrites only happening when there is a significant change to legislation or a number of cases has resulting in significant numbers of terms being invalidated. Pending the rewrite, the term makes it clear any updates to legal interpretation are honored.

In the EU there is also a choice of venue available to consumers so often the 'rules of country X' are not so readily enforceable for companies when they deal with consumers across EU borders. But that's a whole other complicated area.

[mnw21cam]

Actually, the clause usually says that if any particular clause in the contract is deemed invalid under law, then the rest of the clauses are not also automatically invalidated. Like you say, stating that the law takes priority over the contract is a redundant statement.

[tomcorrigan]

Actually what most of those clauses are about is stating that only the contractual clauses that are inconsistent with the law are to be ignored, as opposed the entire contract being considered void.

[mpweiher]

Yes, that's a separate bit "Salvatorische Klausel" we call it.

However, I usually see this separately. For example (German):

"Es gilt das BGB". (The BGB is valid) -> No shit, sherlock.