Study On The Legal Nature Of Time Charter Parties

With the recovery of shipping economic, tramp shipping revivals again in the shipping market. As the particularity of ship utilization, time charter parties are regularly used in transportation. It is an effective method to achieve the purpose of transport by entered into time charter parties with shipowners. Each countries have different interpretations on the nature of time charter parties. In China, the scholars also have several views on the nature of time charter parties because of there are no mandatory provisions on it. In theoretical circles the nature of time charter parties mainly included the contract of carriage of goods by sea doctrine, the contract of lease doctrine, the mixed contract doctrine(there is also included the mixed of transport contract and lease contract doctrine, the mixed of leased contract and labor contract doctrine) and nameless contract doctrine, ect. The foreign countries which hold the transport contract doctrine were influenced by English law. They provide the time charter parties under the Maritime Code, so the time charter parties are deemed as one type of transport contract. But in civil law countries such as Japan and Germany, they also emphasize the labor contract character in the time charter parties. In China, because of the arrangement style of Maritime Code, many scholars thought that the time charter parties both have the transport contract character and lease contract. But there are also different opinions in domestic. I thought various doctrines just reveal one or some features of the time charter parties, not all the features. Now, the time charter parties not appear in the sub-contract law, strictly speaking time charter parties is only one of nameless contract. There is great significance on certain of the nature of time charter paries in shipping practice. Because the unclearly nature of the time charter parties would lead parties to breach of contract and undertake the liability. In this thesis the author also cited typical cases and did analyses, in order to emphasize the importance of determining the nature of time charter parties. Hope this paper would provide important reference to shipping practice.