INTERNATIONAL AIR CARGO & BAGGAGE LIABILITY AND THE TOWER OF BABEL

From its inception in the late 1920s, the overriding purpose of private international aviation law has been to create uniformity of law across jurisdictions - to erect, in effect, a single Babylonian temple in which all disputes would be resolved uniformly no matter where they arose. A unified liability regime was indeed created by the world community in the Warsaw Convention of 1929. Over the ensuing decades, efforts to update this legal regime have led to fragmentation rather than unification, with different nations adhering to differing versions of the Warsaw Convention and its various reformulations. This article addresses the complexity of international air cargo disputes. It begins with a review of the origins and purposes of this private international law regime, and the historical evolution of law. This is followed by an examination of the plaintiff's, and then the defendant's, elements of proof.