Non-State Regulation in the Field of Cross-Border Agency Relations

Abstract

The choice of acts of non-governmental regulation as the applicable law in international commercial contracts has become a common practice. When resolving disputes between the parties, international commercial arbitration refers to non-national sources and resolves the dispute on their basis, in contrast to state courts, which excluded the application of non-state regulation as applicable law. The paper discusses the approach on the admissibility of choosing non-national sources as the applicable law in an international commercial agreement, set out in the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 09.07.2019 No. 24 "On the application of the norms of private international law by the courts of the Russian Federation." The question of the validity of expanding the principle of autonomy of the will of the parties is investigated. The author analyzes the choice-of-law clauses used in the ICC Model Commercial Agency Contract and the ITC Model Contract for an International Commercial Agency. The author concludes that there is a shift in the regulation of cross-border private law relations towards the application of non-state norms and rules when resolving disputes by state courts and the possibility of the emergence of contracts that are not subject to any legal system.