The Right to Choose Non-Law: How to Open Pandora’s Box with Lex Voluntatis

The autonomy of the will of the parties (lex voluntatis) is one of the central institutions of private international law that, in the context of proliferation of non-legal subject matter, multiplying sources of non-state regulation, and also due to the conceptualization of the institution of “rules of law” in the practice of world arbitrations, acquires a new methodological meaning and requires its rethinking. The paper examines the institution of the autonomy of the will of the parties from different angles: as a principle of conflict of laws, as a substantive law institution, and as a mechanism for legitimizing the norms of non-state regulation. The autonomy of the will of the parties today acquires a visible potential of a legal basis for the construction of a special, possibly “hybrid,” regulatory regime for cross-border private law, for mainly contractual relations, it becomes a form of expression of the right to choose non-law. Interpreting the autonomy of the will through the prism of the substantive law theory and in the context of admitting the choice of non-state regulation as the applicable law can pose a serious risk both for the parties to cross-border agreements and for the law-enforcer in terms of conflicting law and non-law. The author concludes that acknowledgement that the institution of autonomy of the will authorizes the right to choose non-law, in fact, means that a fragmented legal space, which itself differs significantly from state to state, can collide with a rapidly scalable, even more heterogeneous non-state array of norms emanating from non-state actors. This state of the normative superstructure can be characterized as a conflict of law and non-law and requires the development and adjustment of an appropriate methodology of private international law.