A Study On Issues On Rules For Examination Of L/C Documents Under UCP600

The core value of L/C legal system lies in prompt payment,efficient operation,and certain anticipated result.Examination of documents is an important process during L/C transaction,and rules for examination are also significant part of the L/C legal system.Courts worldwide have a different understanding of strict compliance principle,and can hardly be unified,which has led to inconsistent verdicts and probably cause conflict of laws.Hence,examining documents based only on the strict compliance principle can't meet the requirement of L/C system.Establishing uniform explicit rules and adherence thereto would be a better solution.Widely applied ICC Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits is an excellent choice.However,it's been more than ten years since its current version UCP600 was implemented,and lots of issues have arisen out of practice.In addition,to highlight the role of credits as payment tools and achieve desired results,ICC published some official opinions violating the articles of UCP600 and ISBP745,which made bank examiners feel puzzled.Therefore,a systematic in-depth study on the outstanding issues on rules for examination of L/C documents under UCP600 is very meaningful in both theoretical and practical respects.This dissertation adopts empirical approach,case analysis method and comparative approach.The most troublesome and controversial issues are selected out of practice for study.With reference to legal precedents,ICC official opinions and DOCDEX decisions are also analyzed.Two other successful international conventions,URDG758 and ISP98,are compared with to absorb their precious experience.On the basis of analysis of difficult issues in practice,deficiencies of current rules for examination of documents are found out,and then suggestions as for revision of UCP600 are proposed.This dissertation,first,studies the hierarchical level of bases for examination of documents established in UCP600,points out the problems caused by not distinguishing the hierarchical level,and analyzes general and special circumstances of the hierarchical level;second,dissects the non-conflicting standard that judges compliance of presentations with bases for examination of documents,analyzes the following issues: additional information and inter-cure among documents in relation to the scope of the non-conflicting standard,the meaning of non-conflicting,identity of data contents,and determination of typing errors/misspellings and its fairness;third,analyzes the influence of non-banking special usages,terms and banking's own usages as well as their separate processing,which include the exclusion of commercial,transport,insurance industry special usages,terms,and rules for trade terms as well as the special processing of L/C numbers,statements of L/C payment tenors in commercial documents and drafts drawn on examining banks,as part of banking's own usages;last,draws study conclusions and proposes suggestions as for the future revision of UCP600.