Abstract

In the area of uniform seaborne cargo rules, there have been the Hague, Visby, and Hamburg Rules, as well as the UN latest relevant convention – the Rotterdam Rules. This empirical study attempts to examine these existing rules which tried to unify international seaborne cargo rules. This survey involved in Chinese and some European maritime professionals. To assess the uniform law in practice, a semi structured survey was designed and employed. A list of questions were included to evaluate professionals’ understanding of this area of law, possible answers had been provided but all questions were kept open for further comments and revisions from respondents. Compared with previous pilot study, this study maintained the used of the paper-based and face-to-face survey, and it explored a new approach – the introduction of online counterpart survey. All surveys were based on the same questions. After analysing all responses, this study found that the Rotterdam Rules were diversely understood and could potentially cause further legal fragmentation in practice rather than unifying law. The Rotterdam Rules faced a dilemma. Though attempting to update the legal regimes to accommodate changing commercial realities, they would jeopardize uniform law if not being widely ratified. The dilemma might come true given a number of negative factors in their ratification. However, the contemporary commercial and shipping realities still call for rules on electronic commerce and multimodal transport.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General) V Naval Science
Departments:	The City Law School > Academic Programmes

Text - Accepted Version This document is not freely accessible due to copyright restrictions.

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