Study Of The Period Of Responsibility Of A Carrier Under The Carriage Of Goods By Sea

This paper is a study of the period of responsibility of a carrier under the carriage of goods by sea. Firstly, this paper from a legal analysis, defines the carrier's responsibility period. With the exposition of the period of responsibility and the period of contract, the paper gets the differences and the relations between the period of responsibility and the period of contract. Through the analysis of the relationship between the carrier delivery obligations from the bill of lading and the carrier responsibility period, the author holds that the former should be included in the carrier's responsibility period.The second part of the paper tells the provisions of responsibility period of "Hague Rules", "Hamburg Rules", "the draft Convention on the Transport Law".And then tells a circumstantial introduction of the development of the carrier's responsibility period under the three international conventions.The third part of the paper introduces maritime laws of civil law system and common law system of the world's major shipping countries which have specific regulation of the carrier responsibility period. At the same time, the author analysis various legal provisions in the carrier responsibility period of the different requirements in a comparative way.The fourth part of the paper explores the origin of "the Period of Responsibility" under the maritime law of the PRC from the provisions of Article 46, and analyzes the provisions of the "container transportation of goods during the responsibility" and "non-container transportation during the responsibility of the goods "in the Maritime Law of the PRC. In addition, it is shown that the provisions of period of responsibility in the Maritime Law of the PRC have had the deficiencies in theory, in combination with the two cases discussed, which makes the judicial practice difficulty.Finally, the author gives some suggestions on "the period of responsibility". By analyzing the problems of the Maritime Law of the PRC, and borrowings of the provisions of the international conventions and the world's major shipping countries, the author believes that Article 46 of the Maritime Law of the PRC should be amended in two ways. In order to go with international standards on the one hand, on the other hand to solve the issues on the Maritime Law of the PRC, and then the shipping industry in our country will be contributed to develop healthily and the judicial practice will be made a better legal basis.