Problems of Legal Qualification in Private International Law

When resolving cross-border disputes, courts inevitably face the need for legal qualification of the dispute. The complexity of the process of qualifying disputed legal relations is due to many reasons, such as the need to consider the content of foreign law, the presence in different jurisdictions of different mechanisms of the legal qualification of legal relations, as well as the level of development of private international law in a particular country. The features of various types of qualifications have been studied in this paper, taking into account the current trends in the development of private international law. Methods: The disclosure of the topic was carried out from the standpoint of general scientific methods (sociological, systemic, structural-functional, historical), the method of theoretical analysis, special scientific methods (comparative jurisprudence, technical and legal analysis, concretization, interpretation). The methodological basis of the study was the method of the theory of knowledge. The purpose of the study: To determine the essence of the legal qualification of private international relations, analyze the various stages of the legal qualification of cross-border relations in the Russian jurisdiction, identify their features, and formulate the rules of qualification that have applied significance based on the norms of positive law and the Russian doctrine. Results: The stages of the legal qualification of cross-border relations were identified, its essence was determined, and the signs of legal qualification for certain contractual obligations were revealed. The paper analyzes the current capabilities of the lex fori and lex causae qualification methods, as well as justifies the prospects and advantages of independent qualification methods.