Admiralty law or maritime law is a body of law that governs nautical issues and private maritime disputes. Admiralty law consists of both domestic law on maritime activities, and private international law governing the relationships between private parties operating or using ocean-going ships. While each legal jurisdiction usually has its own legislation governing maritime matters, the international nature of the topic and the need for uniformity has, since 1900, led to considerable international maritime law developments, including numerous multilateral treaties.
Admiralty courts, also known as maritime courts, are courts exercising jurisdiction over all maritime contracts, torts, injuries, and offences.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) is the legal ability of a government to exercise authority beyond its normal boundaries.
In rem jurisdiction is a legal term describing the power a court may exercise over property or a "status" against a person over whom the court does not have in personam jurisdiction. Jurisdiction in rem assumes the property or status is the primary object of the action, rather than personal liabilities not necessarily associated with the property.
In admiralty law prizes are equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and her cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, she would be made the subject of a prize case: an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.
The maritime lien is one of three in rem claims capable of being brought under UK Admiralty Law. Whilst being a common law instrument, it has been codified under s.21(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 along with s.21(2) and s.21(4), its statutory counterparts. Maritime lien and ship mortgage have a single corresponding term in the civil law, namely the ship hypothec.
This is a list of cases reported in volume 3 U.S. of United States Reports, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States from 1794 to 1799. Case reports from other tribunals also appear in 3 U.S..
United States v. Schooner Sally, 6 U.S. 406 (1805), was an 1805 decision of the United States Supreme Court which found that the question of forfeiture of a vessel is of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, not of common law.
Admiralty law in the United States is a matter of federal law.
Glass v. The Sloop Betsey, 3 U.S. 6 (1794), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that French consuls in the United States cannot hear cases to determine the property rights of foreign ships captured by French vessels and brought into American ports. In this case Glass was an American shareholder in a captured Swedish vessel and sued to determine his rights in District Court. The Supreme Court determined that the District Courts of the United States have the exclusive right to hear admiralty cases.
Bingham v. Cabot, 3 U.S. 19 (1795), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Cabot family, a wealthy Yankee shipping family from New England. In the case the court held in a mixed seriatim opinion:
On the return of the record the following errors were assigned, the defendant in error pleaded in nullo est erratum, and issue was thereupon joined:
- That judgment had been given for the plaintiff, instead of the defendant below, on the 3rd Count.
- That the circuit court, proceeding as a court of common law, in an action on the case, for money had and received, etc., had no jurisdiction of the cause; the question, as it appears on the record, being a question of prize, or no prize, or wholly dependent thereon, and, as such, it was, exclusively of admiralty jurisdiction.
- That the evidence referred to in the bill of exceptions ought not to have been rejected on the trial of the cause.
The judges, after some advisement, delivered their opinions seriatim.
The status of a seaman in admiralty law provides maritime workers with protections such as payment of wages, working conditions, and remedies for workplace injuries under the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, and the doctrines of "unseaworthiness" and "maintenance and cure". Each of these remedies have the same criteria for the status of "seaman". Having the status of "seaman" provides maritime employees with benefits that are not available to those without the status. However, the determination of who is a "seaman" is complex.
Rule B attachments are issued under Rule B of the Supplemental Rules for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Under that provision, the court is allowed to attach a defendant's property up to the value of the suit. Although these claims are filed during in personam actions, they are in rem in nature, as the Court is attaching property to the suit. This has been described as a "remedy quasi in rem."
United States v. Peters, 3 U.S. 121 (1795), was a United States Supreme Court case determining that the federal district court has no jurisdiction over a foreign privateer where the intended captured ship was not within the jurisdiction of the court. The Supreme Court may prohibit the district court from proceeding in such a matter. In the decision the court held:
The district court has no jurisdiction of a libel for damages, against a privateer, commissioned by a foreign belligerent power, for the capture of an American vessel as prize—the captured vessel not being within the jurisdiction.
The supreme court will grant a writ of prohibition to a district judge, when he is proceeding in a cause of which the district court has no jurisdiction.
Hills et al. v. Ross, 3 U.S. 184 (1796), is an early United States Supreme Court case determining that the Supreme Court held:
A plea in the admiralty by one partner, in behalf of himself and his copartners, the rejoinder being signed by a proctor for all the defendants, amounts to a legal appearance of all the defendants.
Prize agents, who receive the proceeds of sales of prizes, and pay them over to the proctors without an order of the court, are responsible to the owners of the captured property for the net amounts so received by them, in case restitution is decreed.
Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205 (1917), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the geographical extent of state workers' compensation laws. The Court held that the New York Workmen's Compensation Act, as applied to laborers in the New York Harbor, intruded on federal admiralty jurisdiction, and that civil suits arising within this jurisdiction were subject to the common law of the sea. The compensation statute passed by the state interfered with federal power and was therefore unconstitutional.
United States v. More, 7 U.S. 159 (1805), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that it had no jurisdiction to hear appeals from criminal cases in the circuit courts by writs of error. Relying on the Exceptions Clause, More held that Congress's enumerated grants of appellate jurisdiction to the Court operated as an exercise of Congress's power to eliminate all other forms of appellate jurisdiction.
United States v. Barker, 15 U.S. 395 (1817), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court upholding the common law tradition that private citizens may not demand costs from the federal government. The case involved a motion for costs filed against the United States Government and resolved the previously unanswered question of whether courts could award costs against the United States federal government. The Court's opinion read, in its entirety, "The United States never pays costs." Jurists have remarked that Chief Justice John Marshall's six-word opinion is one of the shortest Supreme Court cases ever written.
Cleveland Terminal and Valley Railway Co. v. Cleveland Steamship Co., 208 U.S. 316 (1908), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that damages caused to a bridge pier, bridge protective pilings, and docks by a vessel on navigable waters was not a cause for action under United States maritime law. The ruling was legislatively overturned in 1948.
Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, 568 U.S. 115 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a vessel in admiralty law is something that a reasonable observer would consider designed for water transportation. The case arose from an in rem suit brought under admiralty jurisdiction by the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, against a floating home owned by resident Fane Lozman. Lozman argued that the floating home, which had no means by which to propel itself, was not a vessel under the Rules of Construction Act and thus not subject to admiralty jurisdiction. The Court resolved a circuit split as to what it means for a vessel to be "capable" of transportation by creating the reasonable observer standard, ruling in Lozman's favor.
