On Chinese Conflict Of Law In Maritime Environmental Torts

With the introduction of the oil spilling at Mexico gulf on April 20th, 2010, this thesis proposes the importance of the protection to the maritime environment and the urgent need for making conflict of law rules in maritime environmental torts. The first chapter discusses about the concept and feature of maritime environmental torts, among which the damage of interest to the ecology is highlighted. In addition, the difference between maritime environmental torts and maritime torts is covered in this part. Next, basic on the types of maritime environmental torts which have been either confirmed by laws or accepted in theories at home or abroad, the author divides maritime environmental torts into three categories in the perspective of conflict of law, which composes the foundation of the conflict of law rules proposed afterwards in this thesis. The third chapter focuses the analysis on the value of the conflict of law rules in maritime environmental torts. It develops its argument in the following two aspects:firstly, so far there has been neither substantial convention nor conflict of law rules reached worldwidely in the field of maritime environmental torts; secondly, the internal compensation systems related to maritime environmental torts are different from one country to the other. Chapter Four gives an overview to the law application to the cases involving maritime environmental torts in some foreign countries as well as in China. These rules end into either general conflict of law rules in torts or special rules in a certain sub-area of maritime environmental torts. The last part of this thesis discusses the merits and demerits of each choice of law approach which played or is playing active roles in the field of conflict of law. Finally, in the lighting of practice, the author proposes that to the cases involving maritime environmental torts, the Chinese legislation could mainly apply the law of the place where the loss occurring, supplemented by the law chosen by the claimer to his own best benefit; in addition, the law of flag or the law of the committer's nationality could be applied to the cases which occur on high seas and do not pollute the sea water where any coastal nation has right to.