Cyberspace Subsystems of Lex Mercatoria

The medieval lex mercatoria concept is experiencing a renaissance in the context of the global spread of information and communication technologies and the scaling of cyberspace. Lex mercatoria is considered in the work through the prism of cyberspace, which is characterized by community building. Lex mercatoria is considered in the article through the prism of cyberspace, which is characterized by community building. This led to the conceptualization of lex communitas as a “community law” and its cyberspace subsystems.

Lex communitas is considered as a modern historical form of lex mercatoria, mediating the non-governmental rulemaking of international professional communities. At the same time, many professional communities are forming today around various digital solutions, services, platforms, etc. The paper examines such cyberspace subsystems of lex communitas as lex informatica, lex suggestum or “platform law”, lex cryptographia. Lex communitas concept correlates with how the modern system of resolving crossborder private law disputes is also being transformed, increasingly moving to an out-of-court level: from international commercial arbitration to platform and decentralized systems.

The paper attempts to identify the features of the current stage of lex mercatoria development, the quantitative composition of which is rapidly multiplying in parallel with the ongoing qualitative changes in the system of regulation of cross-border private law relations mediated by cyberspace. 

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