Research On International Shipping In The Carrier's Seaworthiness Responsibility

In international ocean carriage, the carrier is the main performer of the contract .The allocation of the carrier's obligation, responsibility sharing and exception of liabilities are closely related to the interests of parties of the contract, in a manner of speaking, the responsibility system of carrier is the foundation of the international maritime legal system.The carrier's seaworthiness responsibility and duty of care for goods are the two core contents of the carrier's liability regime. In consequence, to distinguish the difference between them would means the understanding of international maritime legal system thoroughly.However, since the ambiguity of the related international conventions and various domestic legislations, as well as the difference in practice, there have been lots of controversy and misunderstandings regarding to this issue for a long time.Meanwhile, the Rotterdam Rules ,which is honored as a revolution in the field of maritime law in the 21st century , is the fourth Unity Convention on Contracts for the international carriage of goods ,following The Hague Rule, The Visby Rules, and The Hamburg Rules.The new convention, served as the latest achievement, is committed to truly realize the uniformity of legal regime of international carriage of goods by sea, including the groundbreaking provisions about seaworthiness regime.Therefore the thesis aims at analyzing and expounding the seaworthiness in international carriage of goods by sea, as guided by the theory of analysis of legal value and economic law, to analyze several controversial legal issues in the seaworthiness responsibility based on the newest theoretical achievement of The Rotterdam Rules,in the purpose of putting forward relevant suggestions of amendments to the maritime law in the future.This paper is divided into four parts. The first part:"The evolution of carrier's seaworthiness responsibility" reappears the origin,development and change of the seaworthiness, and brings to light the evolution of the requirements of seaworthiness responsibility of carriers, which turned form simple to complex, form absolute to relative, and relative to absolute.The second part"the study of legal issues related to the carriers'seaworthiness liability regime ", by the analysis of subjective and objective of seaworthiness, trying to provide ideas of seaworthiness for civil law countries; inquiring into the primary obligation and the Nautical Fault, in order to make clear the relationship between the two above and the seaworthiness responsibility. The third part"the value analysis of the seaworthiness responsibility of carrier ".In view of the analysis of legal value and economic law, the author points out a reasonable distribution of seaworthiness responsibility for both parties of the carriage contract and the nautical fault exception should be repealed. The fourth part"the future development and enlightenment of the seaworthiness system" .Through painstaking study ,the author makes a conclusion that"the private law is trending to be publicized increasingly" and provides constructive proposals to perfect China's Maritime Lawin the future; Hence,the reconstruction of the fundamental position of the seaworthiness obligation and the abolition of the nautical fault exception clause in our country, should be accompanied by lots of reforms such as modifying the exemption clause,excluding the principle of Vallescura Rule and the re-allocation of the burden of proof, only in that way can a new balance between the parties of the carriage contract be built.