It was not unexpected that, for voyage chartering, the gauntlet of my criticism should have been picked up by a Norwegian, since the rules are said to be inspired from Norway. As Mr Trond Solvang’s observations have, however, mostly been disposed of in a series of articles in the Swedish Law Journal, I shall limit myself to a short rejoinder.

One general point is that Solvang, like the criticized legislator, seems to think that factual prevalence of a contractual regulation manifests the suitability of that regulation as a declaratory rule of law. To me the test of a good declaratory rule is its function for parties who have not made their own provisions, and emulation of contractual solutions is vain.

The one point about port and berth charters on which all legal systems were agreed was that, where a ship’s destination is a berth, the ship must reach it before time can count. From this, a berth charter could be built up with exactly the kind of exceptions that the parties wanted. The new Nordic law has preferred, abolishing the customary distinction, to place the berthing risk upon the charterer irrespective of the basic clause used, according to assumed common practice. Whether the assumption is correct or not, the method violates parties’ intentions and invalidates compromises varying a berth charter. This illustrates the vanity of mimicking business practice and adopting a statistical mean as the legal rule.