A Study On Legal Issues Of The Volume Contract Under The Rotterdam Rules

In2008,the sixty-seventh plenary meeting of sixty-third session of the UN General Assembly has passed The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea, referred to as the "Rotterdam Rules." Compared with the previous international Conventions on the Carriage of Goods by Sea, one of the important innovation of Rotterdam Rules is it firstly incorporates volume contract into its scope of the adjustment. With the development of cargo shipping, volume contract appears as a new kind of contract of carriage age of goods by sea. The most significant clauses of volume contract are based on the free negotiation between the carrier and the shipper. Volume contract can not only guarantee the stable supply of goods and profits to the carrier, but also provide preferential prices to the shipper.Therefore, volume contract is widely used in the field of cargo shipping.This article will firstly discuss the basis theory of volume contract, including its development, definition, and also compare it with other similar contracts. Then this article will analyzes the volume contract under the Rotterdam Rules, and will also analyzes the core issues of freedom of contract between the carrier and shipper. On this basis, this article will analysis the potential effect the volume contract rules would make to Chinese shipping industry and companies, In the last Part, the author suggests that a section should be contained in Chapter IV of Maritime Code of the People’s Republic of China to regulate the volume contract. And in accordance to Rotterdam Rules, the Maritime Law should endow the freedom of contract to parties of volume contract. The obligations and liabilities relating to Public interest should be mandatory, whereas other provisions regarding the rights and obligations of the Parties to the contract could be negotiated by themselves, and statutory Provisions could be applicable only in the absence of relevant provisions or in the absence of Provisions differing therefrom in the volume contract.