SPECIFIC FEATURES OF AN ONLINE ARBITRATION AGREEMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALISATION

Abstract

An arbitration agreement, as a form of "party autonomy" to foreign economic contracts, should be reflected both in the contract itself and in a separate document. In the traditional context, an arbitration agreement should be concluded directly by the parties with a physical presence in the place of the contract. However, both international regulations and national laws in many countries allow the parties to choose alternative ways of concluding contracts, while determining the possibility of resolving potential disputes through online arbitration. As a rule, an online arbitration agreement applies to e-commerce contracts, but it may also be a part of other types of traditional commercial contracts where the parties agree on dispute resolution mechanisms by means of email exchange. The article provides a comparative legal analysis of doctrinal approaches, national arbitration legislation and law enforcement practice of Ukraine and some other countries of the world regarding the possible use of online arbitration agreements as a prerequisite for efficient and prompt consideration of a case, on the one hand, and as an exercise of the autonomy of will of the parties to arbitration proceedings who prefer information technology to the traditional expression of the form of an arbitration agreement, on the other hand. It is through the prism of practical implementation of this issue that one can confidently state its importance and necessity in a particular legal system. One of the main directions of Ukrainian arbitration legislation is the need to introduce certain elements of digitalisation, but there are still constraints in the form of the lack of a unified approach of national courts authorised to consider cases on the validity of an arbitration agreement. Thus, it is proposed to amend the national legislation of Ukraine (Article 7 of the Law of Ukraine "On International Commercial Arbitration") to expand the interpretation of the definitional construction "form of arbitration agreement".