International Shipping of Goods: Issues of Legal Regulation

Abstract

Nowadays, international trade is one of main types of the international cooperation. In turn, sea transport considerably promoted to the development of international trade as the share of sea vessels accounts for the major share of all international intercontinental transport. Hence, legal regulation of this ancient and actively developing institute is characterized by complexity, existence of a huge number of collisions of national and international legal norms. Legal acts in the sphere of the international carriage of goods are incapable to consider all questions and features arising during the active development of sea trade. The author considers the main problem of legal regulation of the international carriage of goods: lack of uniformity in the sources of the international private marine law. The objective of this research is studying the formation and development of the main international agreements devoted to the regulation of carriage of goods, having paid thus special attention to such main questions, as scope of conventions, responsibility of a carrier, the main transport documents, jurisdiction issues. The article on the basis of comparative method provides detailed analysis of the norms of international conventions covering the international carriage of goods by sea. The Analysis of the content of norms has shown that to date the legal regulation of international carriage of goods by sea is based on four documents: the Hague Rules of 1924, the Hague-Visby Rules of 1968, the Hamburg Rules of 1978 and the Rotterdam Rules 2008. Before the adoption of the Rotterdam Rules, applicable basic legal act was The Hague-Visby Rules, which are a modified version of the Hague Rules. Based upon the abovementioned comparative legal study, the author makes a conclusion that despite the incomplete and outdated Hague-Visby Rules, many carriers, especially the large multimodal lines already developed a mechanism of relations with its clientele by creating their own bills of lading formalities. Hence, it seems odd to expect that the newly issued Rotterdam Rules will be able to quickly gain a position in the legal field of sea transport, mainly because it is difficult for the major carriers to change a well-established legal regime.