The External Relations Of Conventions On Carriage Of Goods By Sea With Other Rules Of International Trade Law

The United Nations Convention on Contract for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea, commonly referred to as the Rotterdam Rules, was eventually adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December 2008. There are four multilateral conventions regulating international carriage of goods by sea after the Rotterdam Rules' passing, which are the Hague Rules, the Hague-Visby Rules, the Hamburg Rules and the Rotterdam Rules respectively. Compared with existing maritime conventions, the Rotterdam Rules makes a lot of amendments and changes on many subjects. However, whether the Rotterdam Rules can successfully uniform rules to govern international contracts of carriage wholly or partly by sea and play a fundamental role in promoting trade and economic development, both domestically and internationally, is mostly dependent on whether this convention can successfully deal with its relations with other rules of international trade law. The aforesaid relations includes but not limited to the relation between maritime transportation conventions and other unimodal transportation conventions, the relation between maritime transportation conventions and the law regulating international sale of goods, and the relation between maritime transportation conventions and municipal law. In light of this necessity and complexity, this dissertation concentrates on the aforesaid relations from the perspective of harmonization, and the main concerns will be focused on the analysis of the Rotterdam Rules.The dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapterâ… is a general introduction to the external relations of the international conventions on carriage of goods by sea with other rules of international trade law. It begins with the definition, categories and foundation of the external relationship of the maritime transportation conventions; then makes an examination of existing provisions regulating the external relationship; at last, points out that the way for solving the dilemma existing in external relations is the establishment of external harmonizing mechanism. Correspondingly, the possibility and necessity of external harmonization and its relationship with uniformity of the law regulating international carriage of goods by sea are also discussed in this section.Chapterâ…¡concerns with the conflicts between maritime transportation conventions and other unimodal transportation conventions. The causes and categories of the conflicts are represented in the first section, and the conflicting provisions of the Rotterdam Rules are analyzed in the second section within the same chapter.From Chapterâ…¢to Chapterâ…£, this dissertation raises an inspection about maritime transportation conventions how to harmonize with the law regulating international sale of goods. In fact, an introduction of the law regulating international sale of goods has been given in Chapterâ… , including a brief explanation of its relationship with maritime transportation conventions and the harmonized norms. The emphasis of the chapterâ…¢lies in exploring the norms harmonizing maritime conventions with the law regulating international sale of goods during normal courses. Rights of control, delivery of goods, and transfer of rights are three important themes in this chapter. In the "right of control" part, the institutional structure, the intrinsic quality and the institutional value of the right of control are discussed detailedly; in the "delivery of goods" part, the rules regulating delivery of goods in the aforesaid four maritime transportation conventions are explored at length from the perspective of harmonization; in the "transfer of rights" part, basic issues surrounding transfer of rights are examined, and the transfer of rights chapter of the Rotterdam Rules is also analyzed.Chapterâ…£mainly examines norms under maritime transportation conventions which aim to coordinate the law regulating international sale of goods during abnormal course, namely disputes arising. Right of suit, the distribution of burden of proof under marine cargo claims, and the identity of the subject against whom the claim is put forward are discussed in the Chapterâ…£.The last but not the least chapter is "the harmonization and interaction between maritime transportation conventions and municipal law". Under this chapter, first consideration was given to the general relationship between international law and municipal law, then next priority was given to interaction between maritime transportation conventions and municipal law regarding to formulation and creation of norms between maritime transportation conventions and municipal law, and the application of maritime transportation conventions in contracting states; at last, an analysis was given to the harmonization between maritime transportation conventions and municipal law on the space of application, focusing on the application of national law under maritime transportation conventions.