A study on the Compulsory Liability and Exceptions of International Carriage of Goods by Sea

• Main Authors: Chin-liang Tung, 董晉良
• Other Authors: Zong-rong Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47450639247392153832

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 100 === Since the eighteenth century, due to the European colonial powers colonize successfully in the overseas, each kind of the raw material massively shipping back to the home countries by the way of marine transportation and then sell to the world, therefore creating a huge maritime power in this area. At that time, rest of the world does not have other countries or companies big enough to be able to compare with them, thus the European carriers issue bills of lading or other shipping documents with many exemption clauses unscrupulously. Because of the unfair and unequal status between the carriers and the shippers, the United States, one of the biggest cargo owner of the world had made “the Harter Act” in 1893, regulates the carriers with minimum compulsory liability. When it comes to the early twentieth centuries, as countries around the world have urged to unify the minimum compulsory liability of carriers, so had the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law relating to Bills of Lading ( Hague Rules ) in 1924. It is a Convention that integrated the minimum compulsory liability and exception clauses of the carriers. However, this Convention was still had the stance of the carriers, United Nations want to make a change so they made the United Nations Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea ( Hamburg Rules ) in 1978. They attempt to make an equilibrium between both parties. Nevertheless, whether the former or the latter both have bias to contracting parties, which in 2009 had the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea ( Rotterdam Rules ). This thesis makes an attempt to discuss reasons about the change of Conventions of the concept related to the compulsory period of responsibility, minimum compulsory liability and exceptions of carriers of international carriage of goods by sea. And then try to introduce the legal regime of the major nations around the world; and then to further discuss the judicial decisions and the opinion of the scholars about these issues in Taiwan, and finally discuss the stipulation and defective of our Maritime Law and provide some recommendations for amendment of the Law.