Admiralty
"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.
"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."
The Emily v. The Caroline, 9 Wheat. 381 (Insertion added).
"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."
J. Johnson, concurring remarks in Ramsay v. Allegre (1827), 12
W. 611, 614.
"(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.
"(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.
"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.
"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.