BA of Law / HA of Law or similar qualifications.

 

The course concerns the private law rules on international transport of goods. The course builds on and expands the transport law subjects dealt with in international private law and international trade law at bachelor level. The student will obtain knowledge of the law of the different modes of transport including multimodal transport, enabling the student to deal comfortably with the legal issues that may arise in connection to the carrying out of an international transport venture and to be able to present these in oral form in English.

The law of international transport encompasses first of all contracts of carriage of goods by sea, road, air and railroad. Furthermore, it entails contracts for transport of goods by a combination of these means of transport, known as multimodal transport. The course will, however, concentrate on the carriage of goods by sea and by road, as these forms of transport are the most important in Denmark. As a starting point, the different modes of transport are discussed, the main focus being on documentation, rules on liability and the distribution of risk. After that, the interaction between the different modes of transport is deliberated. Focusing on the players in the market, the liability of the carrier and the shipper is in focus. Special attention will also be given to the freight forwarder, focusing mainly on the Nordic Association of Freight Forwarders Standard Conditions (NSAB). Also the link between the law of transport and the general law of obligations, in particular the law of sales of goods, will be considered. Other topics may be dealt with after input from the students. 

The aim of the course is to enable the students to deal comfortably with the legal issues that arise in connection to the carrying out of an international transport venture. The participants should be able to identify and describe the issues of legal nature that arise in connection with the transport venture. The different rules should be compared, and gaps, respectively overlaps, and their legal implications should be analysed, thus enabling the participants to apply the rules to given cases and predict the outcome of a given dispute.

Falkanger, Bull & Brautaset: Scandinavian Maritime Law, the Norwegian perspective, latest edition.

Kristina Siig: International transport law: Collection of materials, articles and cases, abt. 300 pages. Please note that this is a virtual collection of materials which is distributed via the reading list on Black Board. NSAB 2000 General Conditions of the Nordic Association of Freight Forwarders - Commentary by Jan Ramberg. Stockholm : Nordiskt Speditörforbund, 2002. - 74 p. ISBN 91-631-1683-9 

Further readings may be given at class. 

The students are expected to be able to research potential further readings independently. 

Spring.

The course is taught partly as traditional lectures partly by the students themselves on a case study basis. All in all, an active approach from the students is required for the student to achieve the full benefit of the course. If the students so wish, excursions to shipping law centres such as Copenhagen, Gothenburg or Oslo may be arranged. The course is taught in 3 lectures of 45 minutes per week for 10 weeks.

1 ECTS is equivalent to 27 working hours. An estimated retail distribution of the workload of an average student can be:

Activity	Hours
Lectures	30
Preparation for lectures	130
Student lead case studies	10
Preparation for student lead case studies	20
Independent search for and analysis of materials	20
Preparation for exams	59
Exam	1

Total                                                270        

Please note that the overall workload of the course does not depend on the amount of lectures taught.

Ordinary examination in June. Re-examination in August.

Participation in re-examination requires that the student has participated in the examination in June.

None apart from the above.

Oral exam.

Oral examination (20 min.) without preparation time in known subjects, covering the entire syllabus.

As an aid to the examination, the students may choose to hand in a synopsis (5-7 pages) to the instructor. In that case, 5 minutes of the examination is spent by the student making an oral presentation of the synopsis. (Students, who are not totally conversant in legal English may prefer this option). The full syllabus remains relevant for the remaining part of the examination time.