The article examines the relationship between national norms and the international legal order within the regulation of private-law relations involving a foreign element, focusing on unification and the resolution of conflicts of laws as interconnected means of ensuring legal certainty. It analyses the functional correlation between conflict-of-laws techniques and substantive legal instruments in private international law, and the role of unified rules in aligning legal regimes and reducing normative fragmentation in cross-border transactions. Particular attention is given to the place of international custom and general principles of law in legal reasoning and the stabilization of adjudicatory practice, as well as to the doctrinal distinction between legal custom and commercial usages. The article argues that the practical effectiveness of unification depends on the quality of law enforcement, the rule-of-law framework, and the predictability of legal procedures supporting the interaction of national and international regulators.
Dmitry Semenovich Belkin (Fri,) studied this question.