An Overview of Transport Law Regulatory Policies. The Search for New Answers to Old Problems and Possible Solutions to the Challenges Posed by Technological Evolution, the Pandemic, and Brexit

The incessant changes in all areas of economy, science, politics and society, with a greater acceleration in recent years, are affecting also the transport regulation, one of the most stable of all the branches of law, having in mind that one of its areas, the Maritime Law, has maintained almost unchanged over the centuries many of the institutes and figures that most characterize it, such as general average, salvage, limitation of the liability of the shipowner, the charterparty, the bill of lading, the role of the master and the crew. In a world in which phenomena such as the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and the ever-increasing use of new technologies, despite being profoundly different from each other, have had and certainly do have a prominent role, operators in any sector find themselves having to face, often from one moment to the next, and therefore unexpectedly and in no time, a multiplicity of problems that are largely completely new, in order to avoid, or at least mitigate, the consequences of total or partial paralysis of their activities. Given the circumstances, legislators, national and international regulatory bodies and jurists are called upon to urgently reconsider and/or integrate the disciplines currently in force, both from the public and private aspects, taking into account the critical issues that are gradually emerging. Clearly, in a globalized context like the one we live in, characterized by a strong interconnection of activities and sectors with each other and where the interaction of multiple factors is inevitable, the panorama is of such complexity that, at the time being, no one is yet able to predict what future developments may be in detail, in the full awareness, however, that the playground is in constant becoming. The choice of the regulatory approach to be followed from time to time is far from easy, especially in the knowledge that on the one hand the evolution of legislation, geopolitics, technology and the behavior of operators on the relevant market are closely interconnected, and that on the other hand a not well shaped regulation could become an obstacle to the development of trade and, more generally, of global economy. New phenomena always give rise to unprecedented problems and, if it is not possible to give a full solution to them by means of the rules already in force, the legislators, making use of various forms of regulatory instruments, in terms both of quality and of extension of territorial effectiveness, should implement an evolution of the regulations, introducing new norms or modifying existing ones, also in light of the interests of the different stakeholders, often conflicting and variously declined, and of the practices that in some cases have been established and have remained constant and unchanged for a very long time. The multiplicity and multiformity of the problems that arise must not discourage, but rather act as a further stimulus: in such a tumultuous contingent situation, it is essential to maintain a certain order and an adequate methodological rigor in dealing with the individual problems, putting them into focus one by one, in order to then slowly expand the view and obtain an overall picture. In this perspective, the selected essays collected in this volume examine, in their dual scientific-academic and practical soul, both issues that arise as a result of the new phenomena mentioned above, and more “classic” topics of the matter, but analyzing them having regard to their most recent developments.