The Legal Role Of Contractual Carrier

The concept of contractual carrier comes from the Commercial Code of CivilLaw. It's a new industry developed from traditional transportation and freightforwarding. The most important character of contractual carrier is to sign transportagreement with third party in his own name thought the consignment is entrusted bycargo owner.Therefore, contractual carrier plays special legal role as he's different fromfreight forwarder, who only takes liability as agent; neither does he perform realtransport duty like actual carrier. With the fast development of modern society,contractual carrier is playing more and more important role in the line of transport.Due to the special legal nature of contractual carrier, to clearly identify it's legalnature as well as duty and rights, more and more countries established relevant law oncontractual carrier. However, in legislation, of our country, this is still a vacancy, andat present there's seldom study on it. For a long time the legal nature of contractualcarrier is in vague status and it's often confused with traditional carrier and freightforwarder, which causes numerous disputes in commercial trade.In the view of aforesaid problem, the writer is trying to systematically study thenature of contractual carrier and legally distinguish it from freight forwarder as wellas actual carrier. By comparing and analyzing legislation of different countries, thewriter is also trying to propose suggestion on how to construct China legal system ofcontractual carrier. The thesis consists 3 parts:Charter One "A General Introduction of Contractual Carrier". It brieflyintroduces the history, concept, and types of contractual carrier. Meantime, throughcase analysis the writer points out the lack of relevant legislation in China and raisethe problem.Charter Two "Legislation of Contractual Carrier in Different Countries and theComparison". It explains relevant theories of American & Civil law, and consequentlyhow did the different background affect the legislation of Contractual Carrier. Acomparison will be made among the countries.Chapter Three "To Construct the legislation of Contractual Carrier in China" With a summary of above content, the writer proposes suggestion on how to constructthe legislation of Contractual Carrier in China. It includes two problems: first, to fixthe legal nature/role of Contractual Carrier by legislation; second, to clarify the rightsand duties of Contractual Carrier in contract.Hope this article could provide some useful advice on the improvement ofrelevant legislation in our country and do some help in the development of contractualcarrier.