International Freight Forwarders Legal Research

Freight forwarder did not appear as a single legal concept from the very beginning. As an industry originated from hundreds of years ago, its special characteristics and legal roles are fully acknowledged in transportation industry and other industries concerned all over the world. Freight forwarding has its own history, in which freight forwarders have been making efforts to meet the increasing demand of their customers and the connotation has been substantially enriched at the same time. The legal position of a freight forwarder is too complicated for relative articles of agency in general principles of the civil law to govern. The thorough comprehension of different roles of a freight forwarder is the only basis to clarify legal rights and obligations between freight forwarders and their customers in practice.The freight forwarding legal structure of our state has been set up, but far from perfect. The NVOCC (Non-Vessel-Operating-Common-Carrier) legal system, by separating NVOCC from freight forwarding industry, is helpful to consummate our freight forwarding legal system, on the other hand, it has some misleading that the former should replace the later, which is not in compliance with the practice and future development of the industry. The final solution to settle legal problems is to make out the freight forwarding law.The dissertation is consisted of four chapters. The first chapter dates back the origin of the industry so as to understand the various roles a freight forwarder plays from a historical perspective. The complexity of the legal position is no strange at all, and the agent role is only a small area in the wide range of freight forwarding industry.The second chapter mainly deals with the definition of a freight forwarder. The existence of various definitions of a freight forwarder itself speaks for the special legal position. There are no binding uniform rules in international world. As for our legal system, clear mind of dissimilarities between forwarding agent and NVOCC (Non-Vessel-Operating-Common-Carrier) is most important.A massive probe of different freight forwarding legal system is the main task of the third chapter. Based on the research into difference between continental agency law and Anglo-American agency law and various freight forwarding legal systems of typical countries, the author managed to classify roles of a freight forwarder. The core of the chapter is to conclude criteria to distinguish the role of forwarding agent and the role of carrier in legal sense.Chapter four is to make an analysis of the legal system of our own country, which is the utmost orientation of the dissertation. The outline of the legal system has been made out, but far from satisfactory. The legal disputes arising out of freight forwarding industry is under discussion. For emphasis, the China International Freight Forwarders Association Trading Conditions is put out todiscuss.On the basis of the analysis of the various laws and cases, the author put forward some suggestions to perfect our legal system of freight forwarding.LUPO (International law)Directed by Prof. Yao Hongxiu...