Establishing the validity of the international jurisdiction agreement on the basis of the lex causae: advantages and disadvantages

The Institute of International Jurisdiction Agreement has recently been incorporated into domestic law through the adoption of the Russian Code of Arbitration Procedure on 24 July 2002 and the Russian Code of Civil Procedure on 14 November 2002. Previously, the domestic doctrine did not give sufficient attention to this instrument of contractual regulation of procedural relations and it was considered only to a limited extent. At present, including the adoption of the Concept of the Unified Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, which was developed for the purpose of comprehensive reform of procedural legislation, interest in international jurisdiction is growing significantly. Subordination of a dispute to the jurisdiction of the court of the state whose law regulates the legal relationship between the parties from which the dispute arose significantly simplifies its resolution, as there is no need to establish the content of foreign law. Agreements on international jurisdiction also contribute to legal certainty between the parties. An agreement on international jurisdiction is of a complex legal nature as it has both procedural and substantive legal features. This type of agreement is at the intersection of private international law and international civil procedure law on the one hand, and civil and procedural law on the other. The study of the law applicable to agreements on international jurisdiction involves resolving a huge number of conflicts that arise when establishing the applicable national legal order to an aspect of an agreement. In the article, the author investigates the advantages and disadvantages of establishing the validity of an international jurisdiction agreement on the basis of the lex causae, i.e. the law applicable to the main contract with a foreign element for dispute settlement from which the parties conclude a propulsion agreement. The collision rule of the lex fori prorogati, set out in the 2005 Hague Convention and Regulation No 1215/2012 for its uniform application to the substantive validity of the agreement, does not contribute to international uniformity of decisions, since the law of the forum country referred to in the agreement as competent means not only substantive but also collision rules. As a result, the question of the applicable law to substantive validity is settled by the courts of various states on their own, and in most European law and order practice shows the application of the lex causae rather than the lex fori. The author concludes that accentuating the statute of the international jurisdiction agreement to the statute of the main treaty in order to resolve the question of the substantive validity of the agreement, despite the existence of certain shortcomings, is in the best interest of individual conflict interests, conflict of interests in turnover and law and order.

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