Electronic Contract Law Applicable Analysis

The conflicts law is the branch of the law system to designate the exercise of territorial jurisdiction by courts in different states. E-contracts have produced unprecedented impact and challenge to the traditional conflict of laws which finds its conventional doctrines of application of laws are narrowly efficient to settle disputes rising from e-contracts. Therefore, it is one of the most urgent tasks to resolve on the application of laws to e-contracts in order to create a predictable legal environment for the ever-growing e-commerce.In the Chinese law circle, most of the discussions concentrate on the issue of jurisdiction upon the disputes out of e-commerce, few of which touch upon the application of law to e-contracts. Nowadays, many researchers agrees that the stopgap for the present situation is the flexible practice of the conventional conflict of laws doctrines, namely, to bring to full play the rule of autonomy of the parties and the theory of closest connection; while in the long run, the final resolution of this issue is dependent of the emergence and adjustment of the unified international e-contract laws.The stopgap proposed by researchers-the flexible practice of the conventional conflict of laws doctrines-provides a sheer vague outline for the solution to the present issue, far from being a detailed scheme or a thoroughly-analyzed settlement. Furthermore, courts at the present time in most cases are simply "using old bottles for new wine"-stiffly applying existing regulations and laws to new technically-based Internet, which, instead of producing efficient solutions, leads to more difficulties and problems. In the issue of the application of laws to contractual disputes rising from e-commerce, it is not workable to merely apply the stereotype of the rule of autonomy of the parties and the theory of closest connection in the conventional choice of the applicable law of contract; in addition, the decision on the connecting factor is by no means easy.Then, how should the stopgap be implemented in dealing with the legal relationship of e-contracts?This thesis holds that, for the determination of the application of laws to e-contracts, the immediate stopgap should be the flexible practice of the combination of conventional rules and modern approaches. Indeed, this thesis also agrees that the unified international substantive rules are the final and the best resolution; however, compared with an e-contract law, it is more likely to achieve a convention on application of laws to e-contracts, the unified criterion to settle e-contractual disputes drawn up by all states, which is the accessible approach to the issue of application of laws to e-contracts.To sum up, there can be 3 steps to go to facilitate the solution to application of laws to e-contracts: the immediate stopgap, the accessible approach, and the long-term resolution. This thesis is written in an attempt to seek out a just, reasonable and feasible solution on the basis of the supplementary explanation to the immediate stopgap and the feasibility analysis of the accessible approach.