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Courts of Admiralty and the Common Law: Origins of the American Experiment in Concurrent Jurisdiction. By Steven L. Snell. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007. Pp. x/481. USD 60.00. ISBN: 1-59460-173-9.
For those with an interest in the development in American courts of a distinct jurisdiction in cases sufficiently related to waterborne transport, this book should fit neatly between that of Prichard and Yale1 on the one hand and Robertson2 on the other. It is more comprehensive in research and perspective, synthetic in process, and thematic in design than the former. It offers more evidence than the latter and it addresses controversies that have ripened since 1970.3
It is about the uniquely American system by which federal and state courts exercise an overlapping jurisdiction in cases commonly (and hereinafter) described as admiralty or maritime cases. With salient exceptions, federal and state courts resort in such cases to the same body of substantive law but proceed by different ways to manage them and bring them to judgment. Thus, for admiralty or maritime cases, ours is a system of more or less uniform law but competing procedures. This book describes in fascinating detail how we got to such a state of affairs and explains persuasively why we arrived there and not someplace else more like the motherland or another of her former colonies.
As constitutions go, ours is one of few words which emerged from comparatively brief discussions that were incompletely recorded. What it says so tersely in Article III about cases of admiralty and maritime law has never been unpacked in a maritime code. The first Congress might have done so, but did not, and no Congress since has seen fit fill that void. Thus, there is, and always has been, opportunity for supposing what the law for cases of admiralty and maritime law was meant to be, or indeed for making it up. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Author Snell points out that Justice Story disfavored codification for fear it would inhibit further evolution of maritime law in step with changes of technology and business methods.
This is a book of five longish chapters with an extensive and well-organized list of sources and a comprehensive index. Its first chapter delivers commercial history, well...