On The Identification Of The Carrier In The Carriage Of Goods By Sea

The identification of carrier is a traditional issue for discussion in maritime law and gets attention from the shipping industry and law experts. A same transportation procedure needs the participation of many parties, including ship owners, charterers, NVOCC and even ship agents and cargo forwarders. Not all of those participants in the transportation should bear the responsibilities of the carrier. What standard should be required and who should be identified as the carrier are the issues discussed in this paper.This paper is divided into 6 parts.Part 1: Introduction. It mainly explains the origin of carrier identification. This part includes the status quo of international transportation legislation, diversity of carrier's definitions and difficulties to identify the carrier in practice. This part acts as the basis of this paper.Part 2: Identification of Carrier in the Hague Rules. According to the definition of the carrier in Art. 1 (a) of the Hague Rules, this part discusses who can turn into the carrier as defined in Hague Rules. Firstly, it expatiates the provisions of Art.1 of the Hague Rules, then discusses the definitions of the ship owners, charterers, ship agents and cargo forwarders becoming carrier separately. Finally, it discusses the B/L clauses that influence the identification of carrier and dissertate the effectiveness of these clauses separately.Part 3: Reform of Hamburger Rules on identification of Carrier. This part introduces the resolving methods for identification of the carrier in Hamburger Rules. It is divided into two parts. The first part distinguishes the carrier as the contractual carrier and actual carrier; the second part treats the shipping contract as the applicable object of the convention.Part 4: New Development in Identification of Carrier. This part introduces the latest evolution in COGASA 1999 and CMI Carriage of Goods by Sea Act ( proposal ) on identification of the carrier. It discusses the definition and identification methods of the carrier. The two acts are the up to minute production in the field of carriage of goods by sea act. Though they have still not become the formal act, the regulation about the carrier is relatively fruitful and can meet the requirement of the development of shipping industry.Part 5: Identification of Carrier in CMC. According to China's Maritime Code (CMC) and cases of the maritime court, this part concludes the criterion on identification of the carrier in CMC. Then it expatiates the status of theactual carrier in CMC, discusses the identification of the carrier in different instance and gives some proposals on the consummation of the actual carrier. Finally, combining the definition of NVOCC under the newly issued Regulations for International Maritime Transportation of PRC, it compares NVOCC with the cargo forwarder, actual carrier and multi-modal transport carrier. It has also dissertated the identification of NVOCC.Part 6: Conclusion. This part summarizes the whole article, drawing the conclusion and research fruit of this article.This paper is written by the way of portrait comparison and has a comprehensive discussion about the development of the carrier identification and compares this issue in different pacts, so that it can help to study the carrier identification systematically. Here on this base the author of this paper put forwards her own viewpoints on the settlement of carrier identification, especially on the maritime law field. Though these points of view cannot solve all the problems relating to identification of the carrier, the author hopes that she can contribute a little to this issue.