Правовое обоснование допустимости соглашения о применимом праве в международном коммерческом арбитраже

Abstract

Problem statement. Specific nature of international commercial arbitration raises an issue whether in this case lex fori is capable to be the ground of choice of law agreement permissibility. Topicality of the issue is determined by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation explanation of 09 July 2019 to courts referring issues of choice of law permissibility to lex fori. Goals and tasks of the research. Goal – research of legal ground of choice of law permissibility in international commercial arbitration. Tasks: to study the ICAC approaches to choice of law acknowledgement; to advance a hypothesis on the influence of explanation by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in respect of article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code to the ICAC practice and to draw a conclusion on the international commercial arbitration «procedural documents» provisions as the ground for it to acknowledge choice of law agreement. Methods. Methods of formal logic play a key role: analysis of the ICAC practice permitted to distinguish three approaches to choice of law agreement permissibility grounding; induction of ratio decidendi of the ICAC separate decisions – to draw a conclusion on the article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code influence to the ICAC practice in general and on this basis to advance a hypothesis on possible influence of explanations by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in this respect; comparison of the international commercial arbitration rules – to draw a conclusion that these provisions are the ground of choice of law acknowledgement by the tribunal. Results, brief conclusion. Firstly, three approaches of the ICAC to the choice of law agreement permissibility grounding have been revealed and in each them the ICAC relies on the article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code. As far as the article 1210 has an impact on choice of law permissibility grounding within the ICAC, explanations by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in respect of this article are capable to have a possible impact on the ICAC practice. Secondly, within the international commercial arbitration the choice of law agreement permissibility grounding should be based on provisions of its «procedural documents», e. g. national law on international commercial arbitration, rules of institutional arbitration or ad hoc arbitral tribunal, – these rules (but not conflict of laws addressed to courts of the state of the arbitration seat) could be considered as its peculiar lex fori.