The Cape Town Convention and Its Implementation in Domestic Law: Between Tradition and Innovation

Abstract

This chapter is the general report on the subject, drawing on the reports on various jurisdictions contributed to the volume. After giving an overview of the Cape Town Convention and its three Protocols (together as “the Cape Town Convention”), the chapter makes a “functional analysis” of what changes the Cape Town Convention has brought, or will bring, to existing domestic laws of the countries. As a uniform law instrument, the Cape Town Convention chooses one rule from among a variety of them where countries’ rules diverge. However, such unification in a traditional sense is rather limited, and the Cape Town Convention in many respects creates a novel set of rules and works as a sort of law reform. Furthermore, the Cape Town Convention, together with its Registry regulations, introduces a mechanism to ensure that the intended goal is achieved. Having reviewed these various aspects of the Cape Town Convention, this chapter concludes by emphasising how innovative the Cape Town Convention is as uniform law instrument.