Legal Jurisdiction Concerning the Disputes in Cyberspace in the USA

In the context of the development of modern digital means of communication, the article raises the question about the mechanism for establishing judicial jurisdiction for resolving cross-border private law disputes. The author makes comparison flexible and strict jurisdictional criteria regarding in relation to cyber-disputes. The article reveals both positive aspects of flexible criteria for establishing jurisdiction that are more appropriate for cyberspace platform and negative aspects that increase the probability of a jurisdictional conflict. The problems of the conflict of jurisdiction actualize the author's appeal to the study of the bases of the realization of judicial jurisdiction. The author raises the question to what extent the manifestation of the jurisdiction based on flexible criteria in the era of cyberspace differs from the manifestation of jurisdiction before cyberspace. The author also analyzes the restrictive mechanisms developed in USA in relation to relations in cyberspace (the Calder test, the Zippo test), which leads to the conclusion that law enforcement agencies need to use a multidimensional differentiated analysis that includes the study of several factors, excluding a formal, mechanistic approach. Subjective factors include such circumstances as the analysis of the plaintiffs‘ interest in considering the dispute in the plaintiff's court; the assessment of the burden on the defendant when considering the case in a court of another state; the defendant's purposeful activity in the country of the court; the defendant's foresight of the possibility of considering the dispute in the state of the court. Among the objective factors, it is necessary to include the nature and number of links between the elements of the disputed legal relationship with the State of the court. At the same time, in all cases, along with objective and objective factors, the courts take into account legal factors that contain a formal and pragmatic component in the form of a manifestation of the public legal interests of the State of the court in the consideration of the dispute. In relation to disputes in cyberspace, the author suggests an approximate combination of the ratio of objective and subjective factors in establishing a close relationship. The author applied private scholar methods-formal legal, comparative legal, sociological methods, as well as methods of formal logic (analysis, synthesis, abstraction, concretization, deduction, induction, analogy).

state jurisdiction, international legal obligations, cyberspace, information and communication space, conflict of jurisdictions, judicial jurisdiction in cross-border disputes, Zippo test, Calder test