ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the relationship between party autonomy in private international law (PIL) and freedom or liberty in political science, in particular the two concepts of liberty clarified by Berlin (1958, p. 166): positive liberty and negative liberty. Although some PIL scholars have justified party autonomy based on the freedom of human beings, this chapter argues that both negative and positive freedom cannot be the basis of party autonomy. It is also shown that, if the choice of law by the parties was based on positive freedom, then such choice of law might conflict with party autonomy in its sense in contemporary PIL. Through an analysis of these issues, this chapter concludes that party autonomy should be characterized as the empowerment of private persons, and the matter regarding whether and for which legal issues party autonomy should be adopted should be left to the policy decisions of national PIL.
