Regarding certain historical and legal preconditions for the formation and development of transport law
Authors: Danilova Iryna 
Published: February 2021

The article examines some historical and legal prerequisites for the formation and development of transport law as a complexbranch of law. It is emphasized that the regulation of transport activities in the ancient and medieval world was carried out mainlythrough trade and maritime customs, and points to the application of legal customs in transport law today.Transport law is a complex branch of law, and depending on the prevailing legal relationship, it can be considered as part of civil,commercial or administrative law. There was no separate school of transport law in the former USSR and Ukraine. Today, research onthe problems of transport law and the development of proposals to overcome them are carried out by scientists belonging to the scientificschools of commercial, civil and administrative law. Within these schools, there are separate groups of scientists or research departmentsthat carry out research to improve transport legislation.In transport law, the regulation of shipping and maritime trade developed first of all. It was there that the first legal customsappeared. Among the legal customs used in transport law, port customs (customs of the port) stand out.In Russia, trade was conducted mainly by river and sea “from the Vikings to the Greeks”, which ran from the Scandinavian Peninsula,the Baltic Sea, the Dnieper and the Black Sea to Byzantium. Thanks to this trade route, the inhabitants of Kievan Rus built boatsand developed a transport system. In addition to sea and river routes, the territory of modern Ukraine was a land route from Asia toEurope, stretching from southeast to northwest of our country – the legendary “Aryan route”, which according to some historians thousandsof years ago from the Indian subcontinent to Western and Northern Europe came the Aryan tribe, which gave development to theEuropean peoples.

The possibility of applying port customs is provided by Art. 78 of the Code of Merchant Shipping of Ukraine. In addition to ports,the customs of merchant shipping are widely used. For example, in accordance with Art. 6 (concerning the permission to include in theagreements provided by the Code of Merchant Shipping of Ukraine, conditions on application of foreign legislation and customs ofmerchant shipping in case the parties may deviate from its rules in accordance with the current Code); art. 71 (in emergency cases, whenthe vessel has to be on the high seas for a long time and the body of the deceased cannot be saved, the captain of the vessel has the rightto give the body to the sea according to maritime customs, about which the corresponding act is made and the corresponding record ismade; Art. 146 (cargo is placed on the ship at the discretion of the captain, but can not be placed on deck without the written consentof the sender, except for cargo, the carriage of which on deck is allowed in accordance with applicable rules and customs); art. 293(concerning the possibility of determining the type of accident, calculating the size of the general accident and compiling the dispatchby the dispatcher in conditions of incompleteness of the law) of the Merchant Shipping Code of Ukraine of May 23, 1995.