3.1 Opening remarks
We now turn to Rome I and the plain choice of law perspective underlying it, including its primary rule of party autonomy with respect to choice of law. We have seen that within our topic of substantive law under the Hague-Visby rules and corresponding national legislation, such a rule of party autonomy is not feasible. Therefore, our interest concerns the exceptions to the main rule of party autonomy in Rome I and whether those exceptions are appropriately phrased to cover the situation at hand. This includes both the question of whether the scope of substantive law harmonizing rules such as those embedded in the Hague-Visby Convention are duly exempted, and it includes whether national (or regional) law systems expanding on such harmonizing substantive rules – such as the ‘Hague-Visby surplus system’ of the Nordic Maritime Codes – are catered for.
We shall see that neither of the exceptions in Rome I appears to be suited to cover the situation at hand, which is surprising, considering the fact that most of the European states involved in shipping and sea carriage are parties to the Hague-Visby Rules.