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.
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