Why Canada shouldn’t adopt
the Rotterdam Rules
WILLIAM
TETLEY
The Rotterdam Rules (R
Rules) are an international Carriage of Goods by Sea Convention proposed by American shipping interests. The R Rules scrap
two or three hundred years of
carriage of goods law based on
the Hague, Hague-Visby, and
Hamburg Rules and replace
them with a much longer, international law written in new terminology, without historical precedent to rely on.
Far from achieving its proclaimed aim, however, the R
Rules create a legal patchwork
rife with optings-out and juris-dictional and arbitrational problems. In effect, they neither harmonize nor improve the law of
the international carriage of
goods; rather, the R Rules would
create confusion and dissension
among all parties to be affected
by them if they were adopted
and ratified.
What are the stated purposes
of the R Rules?
1. The R Rules are intended to
bring uniformity to the carriage
of goods by sea law, where there
is also a land carriage element.
The R Rules, however, do not
achieve uniformity. They contain multiple exemptions and
opting-out provisions. They
cannot bring about international
uniformity unless all major
trading nations adopt them
without exceptions.
2. The R Rules are intended to
update and modernize carriage of
goods by sea and land law.
The realities of present-day car-
riage of goods are increasingly
international and multimodal.
Increases in global population,
manufacturing, communications,
production capacity and new
world markets have brought about
significant expansion in the inter-
national shipment of goods. Sev-
eral forms of carriage are required
to cover the array of door-to-door
transportation needs. The R Rules,
however, fail to provide a truly
updated, binding multimodal
regime which would be required
to modernize the law of the car-
riage of goods by sea.
“The R Rules do not
bring uniformity to
carriage of goods by
sea law. They provide
a long, verbose
convention in new,
untried, untested and
unclear language.
An example of the limited
scope of the R Rules is art. 26,
which provides that where goods
have been damaged prior to loading or after discharge from a ship,
other international regimes apply
rather than the R Rules. Therefore, the R Rules will all too often
apply only to sea carriage.
The jurisdiction and arbitration provisions (chapters 14 and
15) of the R Rules are optional
and this is yet another provision
which limits their scope.
4. The R Rules are intended to
be uniform, with few optings-out.
There are, however, signifi-
cant optings-out for charter par-
ties, non-liner transportation
and volume contracts.
William Tetley is a professor
at the McGill Law Faculty. He
practised law for 18 years and
was then in politics for eight
years as a member of the
National Assembly and a cab-
inet minister in Quebec.
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An oddity in International Trade Law
Smuggler caught with songbirds in pants
A man who smuggled 14 Asian songbirds into the U.S. by hiding
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Sony Dong, 46, had arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from Vietnam
when customs officials spotted bird droppings on his socks and feathers
sticking out from his pants. They conducted an investigation and found
14 live birds strapped to his legs.
A songbird may sell for US$800 to US$1,000 on the black mar-
ket. Dong pleaded guilty to illegally importing wildlife, according to
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