Le recenti evoluzioni latino-americane in materia di scelta del diritto applicabile ai contratti internazionali – Parte I: L’autonomia conflittuale e la rilevanza della comparazione giuridica nel campo del diritto internazionale privato

In 2019 the Organization of American States issued the Guide on the Law Applicable to International Commercial Contracts in the Americas, a non- binding set of rules which may be taken into consideration by national legislators in any review of the domestic legal regime, by adjudicatory bodies, and by contracting parties and their counsel. The Guide strongly relies upon the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts adopted in 2015 by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Guide pursues two major goals: it promotes party autonomy in the Ameri- cas; and it aims at providing a common frame of reference in the field of the law applicable to international commercial contracts.In fact, particularly Latin American States have always been reluctant to the acceptance of party autonomy in international transactions. Only in recent times, significant changes occurred, due to positive reforms of national private international law systems enacted by some States — e.g. Argentina and Para- guay —, even though in others such principle is far from being peacefully accepted (this is the case of Uruguay). In the first part of this article, the author examines the development of the party autonomy principle in Latin-America by applying the comparative law method to both national and supranational private international law regimes in order to assess convergences and divergences.In the second part of the article, the author examines in detail the New Guide on the Law Applicable to International Commercial Contracts in the Americas and evaluates its potential impact on national and supranational legal framework and on the practice of international commercial contracts in Latin America.