CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Balaban, Tatiana |
|---|---|
| Title | Choice of Law and Jurisdiction in E-commerce Contracts with Focus on B2C Agreements. A Comparative Analyses of EU, US and China Legal Frameworks |
| Summary | During the last few decades the world witnessed a rapid development of E-commerce transactions. Today, nearly 2 billion people are active users of online markets. E-commerce, in its unique way, is the only borderless market and this feature makes its regulation highly complicated as of today, states are not able to agree on uniform set of rules that will govern the immense online market. The international nature of E-commerce constantly raises legal questions as the law struggles to catch up to a changing world. The non-geographical nature of E-commerce makes the traditional application of choice of law and jurisdiction rules difficult to apply, as these were designed for a pre internet age, based on connection factors, the strongest being geographical in nature. In E-commerce, it is highly complicated for the parties to identify the real location of the other as the transaction is based on informal declarations that are not all the time accurate, and even these geographical indicators can fail while talking about the contracts performed online. In order to ensure predictability and certainty in E-commerce transaction instead of using connecting geographical indicators it would be more useful to identify proper law and jurisdiction based on party autonomy. However even in this hypothesis it is highly probable that improper law and jurisdiction will be applicable. Such risk emerges because of unequal bargain power of the parties, E-businesses are usually assisted by professional lawyers that are able to design the terms of an E-contract in the favor of their clients. At the same time consumers are less likely to be aware about the meaning and consequences of such clauses as choice of law and choice of jurisdiction, furthermore they are not even able to negotiate the terms before agreeing to them. Hence validity and enforceability of these clauses are of a primary importance, especially because of the fast growing online market. This thesis will outline the main features of E-commerce contracts with specific references on choice of law and jurisdiction clauses. Also thesis will provide an overview of choice of law and jurisdiction laws in the EU, US, and Chinese legal system. |
| Supervisor | Sganga, Caterina |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/balaban_tatiana.pdf |
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