The Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, is proud to host the "Transport Law de lege ferenda: 2nd Annual Young Academics' Vision on Tomorrow's Transport Law" Conference.

 

This annual event has been inaugurated in 2013, in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by the Catholic University Leuven. It has brought together 14 presenters from 13 different Universities around the Globe. The presenters, young academics starting, working on, or having just finished their doctoral studies, had the opportunity to share the current or final results of their research, participate in a live debate after each presentation, establish excellent connections, and widen their knowledge of Transport Law. In addition, presentations were divided into a number of panels, each moderated by a professor, practitioner or representative from the transport and insurance industries. The moderators were asked to introduce the subject-matter and moderate the discussion following each presentation. This method successfully connected the Academia with the Practice, enabled sharing of different perspectives concerning a particular topic of interest, and deepened the discourse between the two.

 

The key goal of this year's event was to continue the initiative, with hopes that the TransLawFer Conference becomes an annual event, hosted all over the World. We are very pleased to conclude that the first part of our mission is already completed: over 20 different universities and academic institutes are participating at the Conference. In addition, we are very happy to see that the legal practice has taken an interest as well, with an impressive number of practitioners joining the ranks of Conference speakers.

 

This year’s event will cover a variety of topics. The first day of Conference will tackle the issues of: law of ship, carriage of goods and passengers, role of insurance in the protection of marine environment, and, provision of private security services in the maritime domain. The second day of Conference will discuss the issues in connection to the: maritime cabotage and ports, shipowner’s liability, Rotterdam Rules, freight forwarding, concessions on roads, seafarers’ rights, and, shipbuilding and ship financing.

 

Each speaker will talk for approximately 25 minutes, followed by a 20 minutes discussion after each presentation. This constitutes the key concept within the TransLawFer framework: the emphasis is equally divided between the role of audience and the role of speaker. In order to foster the development of Transport Law, one has to foster the discussion, exchange of ideas, criticism and acceptance of different views and concepts. A forum comprised of at least 40 academics, practitioners and young researchers should serve just that purpose.

 

Each speaker will be presented with an opportunity to prepare a full paper on the subject of the presentation, to be published in the Collection of Papers from the TransLawFer 2014 Zagreb Conference, in the leading Croatian maritime law journal the Comparative Maritime Law. It is our hope that the speakers will submit papers that not only expand the content of their presentation, but, additionally, reflect on the content of the discussion as well.

 

We are, in addition, very pleased to host the inauguration of a new transport law review – the International Transport Law Review (ITL). The ITL will predominantly focus on the Transport Law research, and endeavor to provide information on the ongoing and completed studies in the field of Transport Law. This will require participation from a great number of contributors, and provide an opportunity for each and every colleague around the World to get involved.

 

Finally, the second part of our mission is to ensure the continuation of TransLawFer annual gathering. We are certain that by the second day of Conference, a new university or institution will present their desire to host the next year’s event.

 

In the Conference Booklet, you will find: information on Conference Agenda, the information on each speaker, a lengthy abstract of each presentation, information on each moderator, information on the International Transport Law Review, information on and instruction for the authors wishing to submit written papers to the Comparative Maritime Law journal, information on the host institution, practical information for participants (including useful links for travel, accommodation and the location of the Conference venue), and the contact list.

 

We wish you a pleasant stay in Zagreb, and an illuminating and successful conference.

 

 

The Department for Maritime and Transport Law

Faculty of Law

University of Zagreb