Global Unification of Transport Law: A Hopeless Task?

Penn State International Law Review Volume 27 Number 3 Penn State International Law Review Article 16 5-1-2009 Global Unification of Transport Law: A Hopeless Task? Jan Ramberg Follow this and additional works at: http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/psilr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Ramberg, Jan (2009) "Global Unification of Transport Law: A Hopeless Task?," Penn State International Law Review: Vol. 27: No. 3, Article 16. Available at: http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/psilr/vol27/iss3/16 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn State Law eLibrary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Penn State International Law Review by an authorized administrator of Penn State Law eLibrary. For more information, please contact . Global Unification of Transport Law: A Hopeless Task? Jan Ramberg* In the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s important steps were taken to unify transport law starting on the regional level in Europe with carriage of goods by rail with CIM (now COTIF/CIM).1 For carriage by air the Warsaw Convention 2 (now Montreal Convention 1999)3 appeared in 1929 and CMR for International Carriage of Goods by Road in 1956. 4 Maritime transport became subjected to the 1924 Bill of Lading Convention 5 (the so-called Hague Rules) as supplemented by the 1968 Protocol 6 (the so-called Hague/Visby Rules). Therefore, I think it is fair to suggest that at the time of the mid- 1970s a global unification of transport law had been achieved although, admittedly, COTIF/CIM and CMR have to be regarded as regional unifications. With the advent of carriage of goods in containers, the interest naturally focused on carriage from point-to-point whereby different modes of transport could be integrated in the same contract of carriage.7 * Professor Emeritus of the Law Faculty of the University of Stockholm. 1. Uniform Rules Concerning the Contract for International Carriage of Goods by Rail (COTIF/CIM), May 9, 1980, available at http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/cim.rail. carriage.contract.uniform.rules. 19xx/toc.html. 2. Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air (Warsaw Convention), Oct. 12, 1929, 49 Stat. 3000, available at http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/air.carriage.warsaw.convention. 1929/doc.html. 3. Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (Montreal Convention), May 28, 1999 (entered into force Nov. 4, 2003), available at http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/air.carriage.unification.convention.montreal. 1999/. 4. Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CRM), May 19, 1956, 399 U.N.T.S. 189, available at http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/ un.cmr.road.carriage.contract.convention. 1956/doc.html. 5. Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to Bills of Lading (Hague Rules), Aug. 25, 1924, 51 Stat. 233. 6. Protocol to Amend the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating Bills of Lading (Hague/isby Rules), Feb. 23, 1968 (entered into force June 23, 1977), available at http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/sea.carriage.hague.visby. rules. 1968/doc.html. 7. See RALPH DE WIT, MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT: CARRIER LIABILITY AND DOCUMENTATION (Lloyd's of London Press Ltd. 1995); J. Ramberg, Multimodal PENN STATE INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 27:3,4 Difficulties arose to create a suitable legal regime to control maritime carriage of goods since maritime law differed considerably from the law of the other modes of transport. The carrier of goods by sea enjoyed particular exemptions (such as the exemption for error in navigation and the management of the vessel and of fire)8 and much lower monetary limits of liability than those which applied to the other modes. 9 Efforts to create a new regime for maritime transport were initiated and resulted in the so-called Hamburg Rules 1978.10 Somewhat later, the 1980 UN Convention on Multimodal Transport of Goods" appeared. The Hamburg Rules have entered into force but on a limited scale and the Multimodal Transport Convention has not entered into force and will presumably remain unsuccessful in its present form. With the Hamburg Rules maritime transport became more akin to transport by other modes, since the particular exemptions for error in navigation and the management of the vessel and of fire were removed. So, in the 1980s it seemed as if the development of transport law pointed at a broader international unification within the whole field of transport law. But the Hamburg Rules failed to effectively replace the old system under the Hague and the HagueiVisby Rules and the 1980 Multimodal Transport Convention remained unsuccessful. This resulted in an on-going disunification of international maritime law. Therefore, the CMI initiated efforts to bridge the gap between the old system represented by the Hague and the Hague!Visby Rules and the new system evidenced by the Hamburg Rules. Also, measures were taken to achieve statutory support for electronic recording of information in order to replace the paper Bill of Lading which so far had to rest on agreement between the contracting parties, e.g. by using the CMI Rules for Electronic Bills of Lading. The CMI initiated a co-operation with UNCITRAL to achieve an entirely new convention. The work has been going on for quite some time and has resulted in the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Good Wholly or Partly by Sea called the Rotterdam Rules as a result of an invitation to sign the convention in Rotterdam in the fall of 2009. Transport:A New Dimension in the Law of Carriageof Goods?, in ETUDES OFFERTES A REN RODItRE 481 (Dalloz Paris 1981). 8. Hague/Visby Rules art. 4.2(a), (b). 9. See for a survey, JAN RAMBERG, INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS 193 (Int'l Chamber of Commerce Publ. 3d ed., 2004). 10. United Nations Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea (Hamburg Rules), March 31, 1978, 17 I.L.M. 608, available at http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/ uncitral texts/transport..goods/Hamburg__rules.html. 11. U.N. Convention on International Multimodal Transport of Goods, May 24, 1980, UN Doc. TD/MT/CONF/17, availableat http://www.jus.uio.no/Iml/un.multimodal. transport. 1980/doc.html. 2009] GLOBAL UNIFICATION OF TRANSPORT LAW In the meantime, the European Commission (DG VII) initiated a study in order to assess the possibilities of finding appropriate solutions. 12 Also, the Economic Commission for Europe (Economic and Social Council), in September 1999, discussed the matter in a particular Working Party on Combined Transport.' 3 There, the need was stressed to achieve: "an international legal r6gime providing easily understandable, transparent, uniform and cost-effective liability provisions for all relevant transport operations, including transhipment and temporary storage, from the point of departure to the point of final destination. 14 It is hard to disagree with that objective. Recent tra (...truncated)