A Study On E-contract Jurisdiction Rules In America And European Union

With the rapid development of E-commerce, many transnational and transregional civil and commerce disputes have been aroused in the world. Compared to the other civil and commercial disputes, the ones on B2C E-contract are special in both considering the parties' will autonomy on one hand and protecting the consumers' interest on the other hand. The EU as the representative provides that the consumers have the rights to choose the court from the plaintiff and defendant's jurisdiction or that the court in the consumers' domicile have jurisdiction on the cases to protect the consumers' interest. However because of the change of the power of the consumers' power in negotiation having taken place, the traditional way which neglects the parties' contentions becomes unreasonable. At the same time, because some nature which specifically attributed to internet conflicts with the traditional legal relationship, the traditional contracting factors which are the grounds of jurisdiction aren't adapted to the demand of reality. Therefore, it's necessary to explore the validity and enforcement of the jurisdiction clause in the contract and speculate the new jurisdiction rules in cyberspace.This paper consists of four chapters: the new challenges to the traditional jurisdiction rules in B2C e-commerce are introduced in the first chapter, which concludes that the function of the jurisdiction clause deserves being paid much attention to facing the challenges; the second chapter discusses the jurisdiction clause in B2C e-contract and speculate the validity of the clause both in form and substance. However, jurisdiction clause doesn't exist in all contracts. The third paragraph concerns on the other jurisdiction rules in the US and EU which govern the B2C contract without jurisdiction clauses. The fourth paragraph is the final part which draws a conclusion on this paper.Two parts consists of the first chapter, and the first one introduces some nature of B2C e-contract and points four characteristics of the B2C e-contract: (1) the B2C e-contract is negotiated through internet; (2) the B2C e-contract's form is different fromthe traditional contract;(3) there are obvious differences in form, time and spot of the contract's taking effect between the B2C e-contract and the traditional one;(4)the B2C e-contract in the form of performing the contract is different from the traditional one. The second part of this chapter claims three challenges of the B2C e-contract to traditional jurisdiction rules: (1) the challenges of the cyberspace to the traditional jurisdiction rules; (2) the challenges of the change of power meter between the consumers and the business to the traditional jurisdiction rules;(3) the appliance of the technology in blocking the internet and agent service to traditional jurisdiction rules. Because of the three challenges above, I think the validity of the jurisdiction clause in e-contract should be paid much attention.The second chapter is divided into two parts in order to discuss the jurisdiction clause in B2C contract. The first part concerns on the validity in the form of the contract, and in the second part, the validity of the jurisdiction clause in B2C e-contract is discussed in substance. The discussion is mainly based on the legal practice of the USA and concluded that the validity in substance is affected by interest analysis, the fairness principle, the most convenient forum and closest contact, and public policy.The first part of the third chapter introduces the non-clause jurisdiction rules applied in the American courts, and points that the American courts balance 'enlarging' of the long arm statues and 'contracting' of due process in dealing with the B2C e-commerce cases without jurisdiction clause.The final part is conclusion. In this part, I have made some suggestions on modifying China's Civil litigation Code in both clause jurisdiction rules and non-clause jurisdiction rules of B2C E-contract.