Study On The Arbitration Clause Incorporated In The Bill Of Lading Under Charter Party

The bill of lading, issued under charter party in the carriage of goods by sea, is usually including an incorporation clause in order to incorporate related contents in the charter. The incorporation clause has been approved by many national laws and judicial authority. Overall, the incorporation clause in the bill of lading is exemplified the autonomy rule of civil law in the carriage of goods by sea. However, with respect to other clauses in charter party, there are some controversial topics on arbitration clause owning to the features of it:such as, whether the arbitration clause in the charter party can be incorporated in the bill of lading; what the necessary conditions if arbitration clause can be incorporated effectively; how to distinguish the charter party to which the arbitration clause belongs while there are multiple charter parties, etc. Therefore, researching on these topics is not only basing on the principle of contract, but also taking the particularity of the arbitration clause into consideration.In the first part, the author introduces the concept and the origin of incorporation clause in the bill of lading, and then summarizes the features of arbitration clause. In the second part, the author argues for both practice legal issues about arbitration clause incorporated in the bill of lading, one is about the condition which the arbitration clause in charter party can be incorporated in the bill of lading effectively; the other is identifying the charter party to which the arbitration clause belongs while existing several charter parties subject to the bill of lading. In this part, by illustrating and analyzing major UK court cases, the author introduces the viewpoints and practices of English court at first, and then sums up the viewpoints and practices of Chinese court on the basis of elaborating some cases. In the last part, with reference to the Rotterdam Rules and other international conventions together with the above analysis, the author summarizes the limitations and problems in China Arbitration Law, China Maritime Law as well as judicial practice, and then puts forward some improvement suggestions on them.In short, the author hopes the discussions in the thesis can contribute to further unifying the attitude to the arbitration clause incorporated in the bill of lading in Chinese judicial practice, and has some reference for China's international trade and shipping practice.