The legal aspects of the charter party contract : common clauses in standard form voyage and time charter party contracts

Abstract

Maritime Law, as far as it concerns contracts of affreightment has a long historical background. The patterns of modern shipping and its associated law may be traced to recognizable forms to the Middle Ages at which time maritime law systems - embodied mainly in compilations of customary laws or town laws - began to develop in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean States. The growth of maritime commerce and the evolution of the shipping industry during the nineteenth century furthered the development of national law systems and important codifications were then introduced in many countries of continental Europe. Those law systems have subsequently been reviewed and modernized. In English and American jurisdictions, on the other hand, maritime law developed mainly as part of the indigenous common law systems, based on court decisions; as a result, the maritime law has been largely built up as case-law concerning the construction of particular contract clauses. International uniformity has been achieved in a few albeit important sectors of maritime law. As regards contracts of affreightment the first reference should be to the Hague Rules which regulate owner's cargo liability under bills of lading. Secondly, international uniform rules which may affect contracts of affreightment also exist in the limitation of the shipowner's total liability, and in general average, the latter is covered by the York-Antwerp Rules of 1950. Although lacking the force of an international convention, the York-Antwerp Rules are invariably made applicable to settlement of general average under both charter parties and bills of lading and have in practice brought about an international uniform regulation of this question.