Study On The Legal Characteristics Of Bills Of Lading As Securities And Its Negotiability

Bill of lading and commercial instruments perform their respective duties in the field of trade and each develops their functions of substituting the delivery of goods and the payment of money. They both record the immaterial possession on the bond paper and turn into a special 'substance'.It is easy to transfer rights only through possession assignment, which makes the circulating procedure become simple and promotes the developing of bargaining. The economic functions of bill of lading and commercial instruments are based on their securities legal nature, so they have something in common in terms of legal nature. In our country, the legal system with respect to commercial instruments is comparatively mature, whereas the legal system in respect of bill of lading has not formed a specialized, dependent and systematic law. In judicial practice, some legal opinions together with the disaccord of the standard of judgment of lightness and wrongness and liabilities have affected the international trade and transportation services of this country. In this article, the legal nature of bill of lading and negotiable instruments is compared and investigated from the perspective of negotiable securities.Firstly, the author affirms the stage theory of the functions of bill lading and analyzes that bill of lading has both the characteristics of debt security and the equity security in the broad sense.Furthermore, the author compares bill of lading with commercial instrument which is the typical kind of securities and draws the following conclusion: for the reason of the speciality of securities, the characteristics of debt security of bill of lading include konstitutiv,literary and non-reason. On the other side, equity security doesn't have such characteristics. As a whole, the characteristics of bill of lading as a kind of securities are undemandingly requisite in form, suggestive and return.Lastly, it is circulation that the securities pursue. However, based on the speciality of securities, bill of lading is different with the circulation of the securities. With the comparative study of the bill of lading and commercial instrument, the author thinks that the general principle and direction between the bill of lading and commercial instrument are consilient and many rules in the legal system of commercial instrument have beneficial use for reference of the systemization of the legal system of the commercial instrument and instructive significance to the judicatory practice of bill of lading.