The Development of Dutch Law of Ocean Carriage By dr. Alexander Korthals Altes LL. M., professor of Commercial Law, Utrecht University The privilege of giving a paper to this distinguished gathering—all, as the British would denote, ‘learned friends’—has a dark shadow. The shadow of the broad scope of the subject. And the time for this talk, for obvious and perfect reasons, is limited to about 3/4 of an hour upon which I would hardly dare to tresspass with more than 5 or 10 minutes: as the German adage says: “Man kann iiber vieles reden aber nicht iiber drei-viertel Stund”. Within this limited time I nevertheless hope to give you a bird’s eye view on the development of Dutch ocean-carriage law—but confined to carriage of goods only. This also because the practical importance of the law of carriage of passengers by sea is almost nil: even in the days of our busy mailships, plying to the East Indies and to America, hardly any case on passenger-carriage turned up in our Courts. Moreover I will try to keep to the main road: the basic concept of the contract of carriage of goods by sea and the fundamental obligations of the carrier as to the material and the people he does use in the performance of this contract. The people he does use, I will indicate further on with the word “Erfiillungsgehilfen”. First of all a brief indication of the episodes or stages through which we together will travel. 1. Medieval law and law of transition in the 16th century; 2. Lawof the Dutch republic; 3. Early codification law, 1800—1924; 4. Molengraaff revision, 1924; 5. Cleveringa-revision, 1955: introduction of Hague Rules/Brussels Bill of Lading Convention; 6. Schadee general revision, which passed our Senate in 1979.
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