Study On The Maritime Transport Documents' Legal Regulation Through The Development Of The Bill Of Lading

The marine transportation document is an essential document for the carriage of goods by sea;it plays an important role in the international goods selling,clearing, transporting and other links.Meanwhile,the establishment and perfection of the modern document trading system makes some transportation documents become the commercial documents circulating in international trade,which no longer limited by the marine transportation.And among these documents,the bill of lading most obvious reflects this change.The bill of lading always has been the most important kind of marine transportation document,but with the economic integration and development of science and technology,the traditional bill of lading system faces serious challenges.On the other hand,new types of marine transportation documents, such as sea waybills,electronic bills of lading and so on appear in succession.This also reflects the new requirements to the transportation document under the development of modern international sea-borne trade.With the lagging of the legislative process of the transportation document,current legal system become unsuited with the needs of the practice development,and led to a series of legal loopholes and judicial problems.To deal with such difficulties,we must improve the existing legal system of the transport document.And to improve the legal system,it is necessary to explore the rule and the trend of it.Besides Preface and Conclusion,this dissertation is divided into four chapters as follows:Chapter 1:The summary of the bill of lading and the marine transportation document.Clarify the legal concept of the bill of lading and the marine transportation document based on their definitions under the conventions and countries national legislation.Analyze the relation between these two documents.And shows why research the system of marine transportation document should start with the bill of lading.Chapter 2:Development and legislation of the bill of lading.Mainly introduces the developing history and legal regime evolution of the bill of lading,and analyzes the legislative characteristic of the legal system of the bill of lading through the summary of legislation of the bill of lading in different stages.Chapter 3:The crisis of the bill of lading and legislation of new transportation document.Analyzes the reason of which the bill of lading faces the crisis and the sea waybills,electronic bill of lading rise in succession.Explore the rule of the transportation document change in view of development prospects of the sea waybills and the electronic bill of lading.Chapter 4:Legislative trend analysis of marine transportation document.Started with the "Rotterdam Rule",which is the latest legislation of the transportation document.Analyzing the develop direction of the marine transportation document's function.Explore the legislative trend of the marine transportation document.