Admiralty and Maritime Jurisdiction

• Author: Charles L. Black
• Pages: 44-45

Page 44

In Article III of the Constitution, the JUDICIAL POWER OF THE UNITED STATES is made to extend "to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction." ALEXANDER HAMILTON says, in THE FEDERALIST #80, that "the most bigotted idolizers

Page 45

of State authority have not thus far shown a disposition to deny the national judiciary the cognizance of maritime causes." There is no reason not to believe him. The First Congress, in the JUDICIARY ACT OF 1789, gave this JURISDICTION to the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTS, which were to have "exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, saving to suitors, in all cases, the right of a COMMON LAW remedy, where the common law is competent to give it."

This language was verbally changed in the JUDICIAL CODE of 1948, but the change has had no effect, and was pretty surely not meant to have any, so that one may organize the subject (as it has, indeed, organized itself) around the two questions suggested by the original formula: (1) What is the content of the "exclusive cognizance" given the District Court? and (2) What is "saved" to suitors in the saving clause?

There is an admiralty jurisdiction in "prize"?a jurisdiction to condemn and sell, as lawful prize of war, enemy vessels and cargo. This jurisdiction was employed to effect a few condemnations after WORLD WAR II, but it has on the whole been very little used in this century. There is an admiralty jurisdiction over crime, but the admiralty clause serves in these cases solely as a firm theoretical foundation for American jurisdiction over certain crimes committed outside the country but on navigable waters; these cases are rarely thought of as "admiralty" cases, because IN-DICTMENT and trial are "according to the course of the common law," with such statutory and rule-based changes as affect all federal criminal proceedings. Normally, then, "admiralty jurisdiction" refers to jurisdiction over certain private-law concerns affecting the shipping industry?contracts to carry goods, charters of ships, marine insurance, ship collisions, seamen's or passengers' personal injuries, salvage, and so on.

The courts early followed the English rule limiting the jurisdiction to tidal waters, but a rather tortuous development around the middle of the nineteenth century extended this base to include first, the Great Lakes, then the Mississippi River, and at last all interior waters navigable in INTER...