Muir Watt, Horatia --- "‘Party autonomy’" [2017] ELECD 610; in Monateri, Giuseppe Pier (ed), "Comparative Contract Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 193

Book Title: Comparative Contract Law

Editor(s): Monateri, Giuseppe Pier

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804516

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: ‘Party autonomy’

Author(s): Muir Watt, Horatia

Number of pages: 12

Abstract/Description:

Now enshrined in Article 3 of the Rome I Regulation (593/2008/EC), the principle that has come to be known as ‘party autonomy’, according to which parties to an international business contract are free to choose the governing law, emerged as a key methodological concept in the course of the twentieth century. It served the progressive liberalization of cross-border markets, which broke the frameworks of protectionist regulatory schemes, emancipating international flows of capital, goods and services from the claims of territoriality. Through a series of technical moves which will be described below, the law has accredited freedom of choice as the foundation of a whole parallel world of private transnational ordering, complete with its own institutions and governing principles. Indeed, from the resulting representation of the relationship between free choice of law and sovereign authority stems the fiction of an autonomous private transnational legal order, widely accepted as the source of regulation, conceded by the various states, of cross-border relationships between economic actors. In this perspective, party autonomy is to a large extent the expression, within the confines of private international contract law, of a wider political economy which serves the global expansion of the neo-liberal market. As such, it fulfils a significant function in creating an enabling environment for private sector activity in the context of a globally integrated economy.