A Study On The Issues Of Application Of Law For The Eletronic B/L Under The Current Legal Background

A Bill of Lading is a receipt which plays an important role in Internationalmaritime goods trading area, and it serves three functions: it is a receipt for goodsshipped; it evidences the contract of carriage; and it serves as a document of ownership.These three functions also act as fundamental reasons which a bill of lading is createdand sustained due to. The Electronic Bill of Lading is developed from traditional PaperBill of Lading and ought to inherit these three functions logically. Meanwhile, asphysical characteristics of Electronic Bill of Lading are different from those of PaperBill of Lading, the Electronic Bill of Lading holds its own functions under suchcircumstances. Currently there are few international and domestic legislations regulatingElectronic Bill of Lading and hence there are legislative deficiencies in this domain.International and domestic studies take legislative deficiencies as starting points andpinpoint problems and propose legislative suggestions which serve as the ultimatepurposes. This paper believes that using current legislations including PublicInternational Law, E-commerce Law, Contract Law and Evidence Act, in the absence oflegislations focusing on Electronic Bill of Lading, to generate a clear picture of legalissues of Electronic Bill of Lading in the application process, has both theoretical andpractical value. The main problems are whether Electronic Bill of Lading possessesthree functions and how to achieve these functions accordingly.This paper will develop based on above statements and demonstrate three aspects.First of all, take Chinese law as a typical case in terms of function that it is a receipt forgoods shipped. According to Functional-Equivalent principle, a receipt for goodsrepresents ‘written form’ in substantive laws and written form can be confirmedaccording to E-commerce Law. According to Procedural Law, Electronic Bill of Ladingcan serve as the evidence and reflect function of a receipt for goods shipped. Therefore,Electronic Bill of Lading serves function of a receipt for goods shipped. Second,Electronic Bill of Lading makes terms of the contract an inseparable part of it byincorporating terms and it therefore holds the function of evidences of contract.However, due to complexity of right-obligation relationship that only by investigatingall terms can clarify attributions of rights and obligations, the Electronic Bill of Ladingcannot serve as the evidence of contract of carriage in the case that only part contract terms are included. Last, Electronic Bill of Lading can only hold its function of adocument of ownership when Maritime Law clarifies the Electronic Bill of Lading as aBill of Lading and can not serve as a function of a document of ownership in other cases.However, contracting parties can negotiate an agreement whereby rights and obligationsare specified. Thus the Electronic Bill of Lading can achieve negotiability function byMaritime legislations and concession mechanisms.