S/L/55. Dissertation. A Comparison of the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Convention

This dissertation compares and contrasts the Hamburg Rules with the Hague Visby Rules. The Hague Rules are the result of the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading. It was signed at Brussels on August 25, 1924. The Convention marked the culmination of negotiations that had been in progress for some years under the auspices of the International Law Association. They came into force on June 2 1931. The rules were designed to bring certainty and legal uniformity to what was then, as it is today, the most important conduit of international trade in corporeal moveable property. References in this paper to the Hague rules will refer to the rules laid out by this instrument. The Hague rules became known as the Hague/Visby rules on the adoption of The Protocol to Amend the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading. This protocol was adopted to amend the original treaty in Brussels in 1968. It came into force on June 23 1977. These amendments were conducted under the auspices of the Comitù Maritime International, and were largely negotiated in a conference in Stockholm in 1963. They do not stand alone as an independent set of rules, but act only to modify the pre-existing Hague structure. The rules are therefore known as the Hague/Visby rules and will be so referred in this paper.