Admiralty Jurisdiction in the United States

In “Judicial Review of Congress Before the Civil War” (THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 97:1257), by Keith E. Whittington, she wrote:

“In a series of cases in the late 1840s and early 1850s, the Taney Court (…) extended the admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts into the interior of the country, removing cases from state jurisdiction and placing them under federal authority. The Judiciary Act of 1789 conveyed the constitutional grant of admiralty jurisdiction to the federal courts, and, in each case, the Court and the parties were explicit that there were constitutional objections to reading the federal law as endowing the federal courts with admiralty jurisdiction to hear them. A suit in admiralty was filed in a Louisiana district court for damages from a collision between two ships in the Mississippi River well north of the port of New Orleans.

The respondent protested that the constitutional scope of the admiralty jurisdiction was tied to the English rule that admiralty extended only to where the tide ebbs and flows. Congress could not authorize the courts to reach further upriver than that. Justice Wayne, for a divided Court, firmly rejected this view: “We think we may very safely say, such interpretations of any grant in the constitution, or limitations upon such grants, according to any English legislation or judicial rule, cannot be permitted. At most, they furnish only analogies to aid us in our constitutional expositions.”

To do more “would be a denial to Congress of all legislation upon the subject. It would make, for all time to come, without an amendment of the constitution, that unalterable by any legislation of ours, which can at any time be changed by the Parliament of England . . . .” The understanding that had developed in North America by the time of the founding, he argued, included a more expansive scope for admiralty and all of that jurisdiction was meant to be transferred to the federal courts. Besides, a more expansive rule than might have been appropriate for a small island was “more congenial with our geographical condition” and the nature of the mighty Mississippi.

The Court elaborated in a separate case that “the question has become settled” by “the practical construction that has been given to the Constitution” that “a more enlarged” admiralty jurisdiction was now accepted whatever “the true construction” of the original constitutional grant might have been. Federal admiralty jurisdiction could, therefore, reach a carrying contract
for goods that were to be borne part of the way on water but “land-locked the whole way[]” (and ultimately were lost in a ship-board fire).

Finally, in 1851, Chief Justice Taney wrote for the Court in considering the 1845 statutory extension of federal admiralty jurisdiction over the Great Lakes.

Although Taney thought the Commerce Clause might give the federal government partial authority over shipping in the lakes, the statute at hand did not fit the bill and would be unconstitutional on those grounds. Taney likewise called attention to the geographical differences between England and the United States. “These lakes are in truth inland seas,” and “[c]ertainly it was not the intention of the framers of the Constitution” to deny to those citizens who live near the lakes the benefits enjoyed by those citizens who lived near the Atlantic
Ocean.

In England, “tide-water and navigable water are synonymous terms,” and that might have been true of the original thirteen states as well, but it was no longer true. The Constitution should not be read to impose “purely artificial and arbitrary as well as unjust” distinctions when it could be read otherwise.

The Taney Court proved to be quite open to this extension of federal power, but drew the constitutional line in People’s Ferry Co. v. Beers.”