Ruling Case Law
"The technical niceties of the common law are not regarded. .. .", 1
R.C.L. § 31, p. 422. "A jury does not figure, ordinarily, in the trial
of an admiralty suit. . . the verdict of the jury merely advisory, and
may be disregarded by the court." 1 R.C.L. §40, p. 432. "[The] rules
of practice may be altered whenever found to be inconvenient or likely
to embarrass the business of the court." 1 R.C.L. §32, p. 423. "A court
of admiralty. . . acts upon equitable principles." 1 R.C.L. §17, p.
416.
The Emily v. The Caroline,
9 Wheat. 381 (Insertion added).
"A libel of information [accusation] does not require all the technical
precision of an indictment at common law. If the allegations describe
the offense, it is all that is necessary; and if it is founded upon
a statute, it is sufficient if it pursues the words of the law."
J. Johnson, concurring
remarks in Ramsay v. Allegre (1827), 12 W. 611, 614.
"I concur with my brethren in sustaining the decree below, but cannot
consent to place my decision upon the ground on which they have placed
theirs. I think it high time to check this silent and stealing progress
of the admiralty in acquiring jurisdiction to which it has no pretensions.
Unfounded doctrines ought at once to be met and put down; and dicta,
as well as decisions, that cannot bear examination ought not to be evaded
and permitted to remain on the books to be commented upon and acquiesced
in by courts of justice, or to be read and respected by those whose
opinions are to be formed upon books. It affords facilities for giving
an undue bias to public opinion, and, I will add, of interpolating doctrines
which belong not to the law.
"I have now said a great deal on this subject, and I could not have
said less, and discharged the duty which I feel I owe to the community.
I am fortifying a weak point in the wall of the Constitution. Every
advance of the admiralty is a victory over the common law; a conquest
gained upon the trial by jury. The principles upon which alone this
suit could have been maintained are equally applicable to one-half the
commercial contracts between citizen and citizen. Once establish the
rights here claimed, and it may bring back with all the admiralty usurpations
of the fifteenth century. In England there exists a controlling power,
but here there is none. Congress has, indeed, given a power to issue
prohibitions to a district court, when transcending the limits of the
admiralty jurisdiction. But who is to issue a prohibition to us, if
we should ever be affected with a partiality for that jurisdiction?
"I therefore hold that we are under a peculiar obligation to restrain
the admiralty jurisdiction within it proper limits.
". . . (t)hat in case of contracts it has no jurisdiction at all in
personam, except as incident to the exercise of its jurisdiction in
rem."
Bains v. The Schooner
James & Catherine (1832), 2 Fed. 410, pp.565-566.
"(B)y attempting to
introduce the admiralty jurisdiction of the civil law,. . . a foundation
is laid for interminable conflicts of jurisdiction between the courts
of the state and the Union.
"It is vain to contend
that the 7th Amendment will be any efficient guarantee for the right,
in suits at common law, if an admiralty jurisdiction exists in the United
States commensurate with what is claimed by the claimant in this case.
Its assertion is, in my opinion, a renewal of the contrast between legislative
power and royal prerogative, the common and the civil law striving for
mastery; the one to secure, the other to take away, the trial by jury,
judicial power must first annul the 7th Amendment or judicial subtlety
transform a suit at common law into a case of admiralty and maritime
jurisdiction, before I take cognizance of such a case as this without
a jury."
[Bains v. The Schooner
James & Catherine (1832), 2 Fed. 410, pp.565-566]
Ramsay v. Allegre (1827), 12 W. 611.
"(A)nd I have Craddock's
case, and Leigh and Burleigh's case, in which the court of Admiralty
was expressly prohibited from proceeding in personam, in behalf of material-men.
I should think here I have a right to demand, if from the whole library
of law books, and God knows that we have enough of them already, "camel
loads", a single attempt to proceed in personam, upon a contract in
the admiralty, except for seaman's wages, since the date of the resolutions
of 1682, can be extracted. Adjudged cases cannot be found, because,
since the antique cases to which I have referred, the right has been
abandoned. Dicta enough can be produced, and some of those very modern.
"Godbolt speaks of
the process in rem, as the only process issuable in the first instance
from the admiralty.
"In the addition of
Abbott which I have quoted, in a note upon the case of Hoar v. Clement,
p. 136, case arising on a contract for necessities, it is admitted,
"that the court of admiralty had no jurisdiction over the person in
that case."
"In Keble's Reports,
p. 500, quoted by Brown, it is expressly said, "that without a stipulation,
the admiralty has no jurisdiction at all over the person." (p. 629).
"Let the cases be searched
from the remotest period down to the time of Menetone v. Gibbons, 3
T. R. 267, and the ground of prohibition, and of recovery, under the
2nd of Henry IV, will be found to be the competency of the common law
to enforce the contract. This is the principle by which even their jurisdiction
in rem is controlled, and hence it follows that in no case in which
they are prohibited from proceeding in rem can they have the action
in personam."
[Ramsay v. Allegre
(1827), 12 W. 611]
The Western Maid, 257
U.S. 419 (1922):
"…we must realize
that, however ancient may be the traditions of maritime law, however
diverse the sources from which it has been drawn, it derives
its whole and only power in this country from its having been accepted
and adopted by the United States. There is no mystic
over law to which even the United States must bow.
When a case is said to be governed by foreign law or by general maritime
law, that is only a short way of saying that, for this purpose, the
sovereign power takes up a rule suggested from without and makes it
part of its own rules. Also we must realize that the authority that
makes the law is itself superior to it, and that, if it consents to
apply to itself the rules that it applies to others, the consent is
free, and may be withheld. The sovereign does not create justice
in an ethical sense, to be sure, and there may be cases in which it
would not dare to deny that justice for fear of war or revolution. Sovereignty is a question of power, and no human power is unlimited."
[The Western Maid,
257 U.S. 419 (1922)]
Satterlee v. Mathewson,
2 P. 380, 414, 415, J. Johnson dissenting.
"What boots it, that
I am protected by that Constitution from having the obligations of my
contracts violated, if the legislative power can create a contract for
me, or render binding upon a contract which was null and void in its
creation? To give efficacy to void contract is not, it is true, violating
a contracting, but it is doing infinitely worse; it is advancing to
the very extreme of that class of arbitrary and despotic acts which
bear upon individual rights and liabilities, and against the whole of
which the Constitution most clearly intended to interpose a projection
commensurate with the evil."
[Satterlee v. Mathewson,
2 P. 380, 414, 415, J. Johnson dissenting]
DeLovio v. Boit,
2 Gall. 398, Fed Cas. No. 3,776.
"The jurisdiction of
the admiralty depends, or ought to depend, as to contracts upon the
subject matter, i. e., whether maritime or not;. . . "
[ DeLovio v. Boit,
2 Gall. 398, Fed Cas. No. 3,776]
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