A Study On The Legal System Of Shipper Under The Contract Of Carriage Of Goods By Sea

The gradual establishment of the shipper system and its independence from transport law whose core area is the carrier are necessary for the co-ordination of trading and shipping. They also reflect a balance between shipping parties and cargo parties in legislation. To establish the status of the shipper in transport law and to make clear the shipper's rights and responsibilities will help the profits of both sides to be balanced and the shipping industry to be protected and promoted. Therefore, the shipper system should be revised and improved according to the development of the society. Various research methods including historical analysis, legislative comparison, legal interpretation, logical analysis, case study and comparison, factual analysis and systematical study are applied to analyze and discuss issues arising out of shipper both in international level and domestic level. Suggestions for amendments and perfection in the system of shipper are given in the end.Introduction explains the topics of significance, research content, research methods, research status, as well as the terminologies used in this dissertation.Chapter 1, in order to define the concept of the shipper clearly and to know the background of its relative rights and responsibilities, we should study the history of the shipper system and compare with the advantages and disadvantages of the shipper system in the "Hamburg Rule" and the Rotterdam Rule. Taking reference and transplantation from international legislation and revising existing law in China will help the Maritime law keep pace with the world.Chapter 2, the contractual shipper is counterparty of the contract of carriage of goods by sea and the regulation to the contractual shipper's rights and obligations made by transport law should take the contractual shipper as the object. This article would mainly take the "Rotterdam Rule" as the object of study and elaborate comprehensively the contractual shipper's rights and responsibilities in the transport law through comparative analysis and historical method.Chapter 3, besides the contractual shipper, the "Hamburg Rule" has also authorized the shipper's legal status to the person who actually deliver the cargo to the carrier, but the consignor shipper's rights and responsibilities need to be identified through the unification of the concrete provision and specific practical situation. While in "the Rotterdam Rule", the consignor shipper has a evolutionary process which starts from setting up and ends with being deleted finally. This article has a specific elaboration to the consignor shipper's rights and responsibilities under the present system basing on the background mentioned above.Chapter 4, the documentary shipper is a new concept while it is not a main part of legal innovation. Seemingly, the documentary shipper in the Rotterdam Rule has replaced the consignor shipper in the Hamburg Rule. However, actually, this is a rational attempt to maintain the seller's rights and interests under the FOB. This article has compared the documentary shipper with the consignor shipper and has elaborated the documentary shipper's rights and responsibilities in the Rotterdam Rule in detail, especially the rights to obtain the transport document. The author indicates that the definition of the documentary shipper in the Rotterdam rules is not very explicit and the rules of signing and issuing of transport document are not sufficient, thereby proposing some suggestions to revise it.Chapter 5, the present legislation on the shipper system in "Maritime law" of China, from concept recognition to specific explanation of its rights and responsibilities, has been analyzed comprehensively in this article. The study shows that legislation on the shipper in China is insufficient obviously and this article has proposed relative revisions in five aspects according to the analyses and discussions in the former chapters. This article suggests that China should accept the system of the "Rotterdam Rule" in legislation which prefers the new dual framework of shipper and documentary shipper to the present dual framework of contractual shipper and consignor shipper which should be discarded.