Shipping Law: General information about all courses

2009 ACADEMIC YEAR: Terms and breaks
First semester first quarter: Mid-term break: First semester second quarter: Mid-year vacation: Second semester third quarter: Mid-term break: Second semester fourth quarter:	16 February to 3 April 4 April to 13 April 14 April to 12 June 13 June to 26 July 27 July to 4 September 5 September to 13 September 8 September to 12 December

CONVENER:
Prof John Hare
5.01 Kramer Building
Middle Campus
University of Cape Town
Telephone 021 650 2676 Fax 021 650 5631
john.hare@uct.ac.za

WELCOME to the Shipping Law Unit! Remember that to be a good shipping lawyer, you need to know more than just the law. You need to know and understand both the business and the mechanics of shipping. Make use of your Shipping Law Unit and the facilities it offers. Use the Internet, and find out about new horizons in Shipping Law out there waiting for you.

The first semester course in Admiralty Jurisdiction was withdrawn owing to there being too few students registering for the course. It will be on offer again in the first semester of 2010.

In the second semester, lectures will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays ti 17h00 – 18h45 for Maritime Law and on Wednesdays 16h00 to 17h30 for Carriage of Goods. All classes take place in the Marine, Shipping & Environmental Law specialist classroom, the Smit Marine Seminar Room on level 5 of the Wilfred & Jules Kramer Building in which the Law Faculty is housed. The Shipping Law Unit is also on Level 5.

Carriage of Goods will start with a block teaching session in the second week of the second semester from 09h00 to 17h00 continuing every Wednesday thereafter. There will be two days of debates at the end of the teaching semester.

Parking should be available in the parking area between the Law Faculty and De Waal Drive, but there are major building works scheduled for this year on Middle Campus, so you should unfortunately expect some parking problems. Students’ attention is drawn to the security information notice that is handed out at registration and posted on the Unit notice board.

Much of the tuition is achieved by problem solving in class tutorial work. This is done either by tackling a set problem at the end of a lecture, or by more formal prepared tutorial sessions. Tutorial topics for discussion will be handed out the week before the tutorials. You are asked to prepare for your tutorials so that discussion can be free and open, and each person can make a contribution. The tutorials will be as informal as possible. The idea is to discuss ideas, and draw from the experiences of those on the course.

There will be two assignments set (or one assignment and a debate) during the semester. The assignments will require written answers and should be submitted by due date. Late assignments will be penalised with 1% per day mark deductions. Assignments will together count for 50% of the coursemark.
Foreign students are encouraged to adopt a comparative approach to their assignments. They should keep an eye on their own legal systems throughout.

A 3 hour written examination on Admirlaty will be written at the end of the course in June 2009. Maritime Law and Carriage of Goods are examined at the end of the second quarter, also with 3 hour papers. The examinations count 50% of the coursemark. Students are permitted to take into the exam unannotated copies of statutes, rules, conventions and other international instruments, but not notes, nor case reports. Dictionaries are of course allowed.

Dissertations on a subject of each student's own choice will be required for both the Post Graduate Diploma and the LLM. Students may choose a topic covering any or all of courses studied. Diploma dissertations are of a maximum 15 000 words, LLM dissertations 25 000 words.

Choice of topic requires the approval of the lecturer of the section of the course on which the dissertation is to be written, and the submission of a form to the SALS office. A supervisor will then be appointed by the Faculty.

To graduate in June, dissertations must be submitted by 15 April. To graduate at the end of 2009, dissertations are required to be submitted by mid September. Any student wishing to submit a dissertation is required to apply for approval of a topic and the appointment of a supervisor at least two months before the date the dissertation is due.

Please consult the SALS Handbook for details. There is a special handout for dissertation instructions.

You will appreciate that we value the academic standards at the UCT Law Faculty greatly: LLM students are reminded that no failed subject may be repeated, and Rule FMC9 provides that any student who fails two Master's courses will be excluded from the LLM programme. No supplementary examinations are allowed. Being absent from an exam is recorded as a "fail". Students who therefore decide to withdraw from the course should do so in writing before exam time. Please contact the SALS Handbook for details.

Failure to submit your dissertation on time can also result in exclusion from the programme.

It is a requirement of the course that students achieve satisfactory attendance at lectures, tutorials and debates, and completion of written assignments by due date as the "duly performed" prerequisite for sitting course-end exams. Please note the special attendance requirements for the block teaching sessions of Carriage of Goods.

Field visits will be arranged in appropriate circumstances. Informal discussion groups are also encouraged. All field visits are done at a student’s own risk. Wear ‘sensible’ shoes if we go on board ships!

Students are encouraged to make use of the facilities of the Shipping Law Unit (Level 5 at the Law School).

The Unit collects and indexes important source materials on shipping and gets back issues of Fairplay the shipping weekly which is the oldest operating newspaper. Full time students particularly will be encouraged to visit the Seminar Room and read the periodicals regularly to broaden their knowledge of and interest in shipping. Part-time students are welcome to use the facilities in the evenings and at weekends. Please arrange an entry code with Prof Hare.

Certain of the more important textbooks are kept in the Seminar Room for use by students. They have been acquired through donor funding. A catalogue is available.

No materials, especially books, may be removed at any time without written consent. If you wish to copy something, ask, and return the original promptly. In previous years students have abused this privilege, resulting in the suspension of access to the Unit for all students. This would be most regrettable. You are all asked for your full co-operation, on trust.

The two computers in the Unit’s reading room have UCT internet access and have MARSA, a most useful electronic database of SA maritime and marine legislation, including regulations. It is a most useful facility and you are encouraged to use it.

Part-time students in practice are asked to help us establish our information base by letting us have copies of documents which are encountered in practice which may be useful for the later reference of others. Documents such as collective crew employment agreements, standard charter parties, unreported judgements, even opinions will be filed and catalogued for future use.

Please consider donating unwanted books on shipping law to the unit. We have a growing collection of non-academic books of maritime interest — give freely and watch our library grow!

The Law Library on Level 2 is well-stocked with books on Shipping Law and Marine Law. Please make use of the library. There is a computerised catalogue system, access to which is possible on the two PCs available in the Unit for Shipping Law students’ use. New students to the Faculty will be shown around the library early in the term.

There is at the UCT Law Faculty a fully equipped computer laboratory. There are terminals for the use of students, and each student has full e-mail accessibility and facilities accessed via his/her student number. It is possible to access the Internet. The Unit's two computers are for the use of students and is connected to the Internet. Students are encouraged to "surf" for research materials. Failure to indicate borrowed text and to give full acknowledgement of sources is plagiarism which will lead to immediate rustication from the University. When in doubt as to how to acknowledge quoted text, speak to your lecturer.

The Faculty computers have a full menu of programmes, amongst which are Jutastat which gives full access to SA law reports and legislation, and Butterworth’s Books on Line. We subscribe to MARSA, which is complete digital set of shipping statutes and regulations. These may also be accessed through the computers in unit. Students are encouraged to learn about and make full use of the computer facilities. Word processing and printing facilities are available to students in the lab. You may e-mail your assignments to me at <john.hare@uct.ac.za> without printing if you so wish. As graduate students, you are also welcome to enrol on the courses presented by the Information Technology Services department of UCT ("ICTS") — though at your own cost.

Marine & Shipping Law has its own website. We proudly boast that it was the second shipping law website to be set up on the web. The site contains a wealth of information, and much of the source materials needed for the Shipping Law courses. Students are encouraged to help in building the site by providing documents suitable for scanning into the site, and by monitoring developments in the admiralty court in Durban and Cape Town. Please let us know if you find any useful shipping law sites to which we can link. Useful, course related links should be mailed to me so that we can call them up in class. Our classroom has internet connectivity, and much use is made of the internet during teaching.

There is on the site an alumni section containing student's profiles and e-mail addresses. You are encouraged to use the site as a means of keeping in touch.

I shall be on sabbatical for the first quarter of the year. During this time please consult Graham Bradfield for shipping queries. Carl Briesch will be manning the shipping desk in the unit. I hope to meet you during this time, and we wish you a fulfilling time of study.