1. The doctrine of the case of
The
Genesee Chief, 12 How. 443, that the admiralty
jurisdiction of the federal courts as granted by the Constitution
as not limited to tidewater, but extends wherever vessels float and
navigation successfully aids commerce approved and affirmed.
2. The grant of admiralty powers to the district courts of the
United States by the ninth section of the Act of September 24,
1789, is coextensive with this grant in the Constitution as to the
character of the waters over which it extends.
Page 71 U. S. 556
3. The Act of February 26, 1845, is a limitation of the powers
granted by the act of 1789 as regards cases arising upon the lakes
and navigable waters connecting said lakes, in the following
particulars:
1. It limits the jurisdiction to vessels of twenty tons burden
and upwards, enrolled and licensed for the coasting trade, and
which are employed in commerce and navigation, between ports and
places in different states.
2. It grants a jury trial, if either party shall demand it.
3. The jurisdiction is not exclusive, but is expressly made
concurrent with such remedies as may be given by state laws.
4. The grant of original admiralty jurisdiction by the act of
1789, including as it does all cases not covered by the act of
1845, is exclusive not only of all other federal courts, but of all
state courts.
5. Therefore state statutes which attempt to confer upon state
courts a remedy for marine torts and marine contracts by
proceedings strictly
in rem are void because they are in
conflict with that act of Congress except as to cases arising on
the lakes and their connecting waters.
6. These statutes do not come within the saving clause of the
ninth section of the act of 1789, concerning a common law
remedy.
7. But this rule does not prevent the seizure and sale by the
state courts of the interest of any owner or part owner in a vessel
by attachment or by general execution when the proceeding is a
personal action against such owner, to recover a debt for which he
is personally liable.
8. Nor does it prevent any action which the common law gives for
obtaining a judgment
in personam against a party liable in
a marine contract or a marine tort.
A collision occurred between the steamboats
Hine and
Sunshine on the
Mississippi River at or near St.
Louis in which the latter vessel was injured. Some months
afterwards, the owners of the
Sunshine caused the
Hine to be seized while she was lying at Davenport, Iowa,
in
a proceeding under the laws of that state, to subject
her to sale in satisfaction of the damages sustained by their
vessel. The Code of Iowa, under which this seizure was made, gives
a lien against any boat found in the waters of that state for
injury to person or property by said boat, officers or crew
&c.; gives precedence in liens; authorizes the seizure and sale
of the boat, without any process against the wrongdoer, whether
owner or master, and saves the plaintiff all his
Page 71 U. S. 557
common law rights, but makes no provision to protect the owner
of the vessel.
The owners of the
Hine interposed a plea
to the
jurisdiction of the state court. The point being ruled against
them, it was carried to the supreme court of the state, where the
judgment of the lower court was affirmed, and by the present writ
of error this Court was called upon to reverse that decision.
To comprehend the argument fully, it is here well to state that
Congress had, prior to the date of this proceeding, enacted:
1. In 1789, September 24th, by the Judiciary Act, that the
district court of the United States
"shall have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of
admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, including all seizures under
the laws of impost, navigation, or trade of the United States,
where the seizures are made on waters which are navigable from the
sea by vessels of ten or more tons burden, . . .
saving to
suitors in all cases the right of a common law remedy where the
common law is competent to give it."
2. In 1845, by statute of the 26th February of that year,
"That the district courts of the United States shall have,
possess, and exercise the same jurisdiction in matters of contract
and tort arising in, upon, or concerning steamboats and other
vessels of twenty tons burden and upwards, enrolled and licensed
for the coasting trade, and at the same time employed in business
of commerce and navigation, between ports and places in different
states and territories upon the
lakes and
navigable
waters connecting said lakes as is now possessed and exercised
by the said courts in cases of the like steamboats and other
vessels, employed in navigation and commerce upon the high seas, or
tidewaters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the
United States."
The question in the present case was how far the jurisdiction of
the district courts of the United States, in cases of admiralty
arising on our navigable inland waters, is exclusive, and how far
the state courts might exercise jurisdiction concurrently.
Page 71 U. S. 561
MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The record distinctly raises the question how far the
jurisdiction of the district courts of the United States in
admiralty causes arising on the navigable inland waters of this
country is exclusive and to what extent the state courts can
exercise a concurrent jurisdiction.
Nearly all the states -- perhaps all whose territories are
penetrated or bounded by rivers capable of floating a steamboat --
have statutes authorizing their courts, by proceedings
in
rem, to enforce contracts or redress torts which, if they had
the same relation to the sea that they have to the waters of those
rivers, would be conceded to be the subjects of admiralty
jurisdiction. These statutes have been acted upon for many years,
and are the sources of powers exercised largely by the state courts
at the present time. The question of their conflict with the
constitutional legislation of Congress on the same subject is now
for the first time presented to this Court.
We are sensible of the extent of the interests to be affected by
our decision and the importance of the principles upon which that
decision must rest, and have held the case under advisement for
some time in order that every consideration which could properly
influence the result might be deliberately weighed.
Page 71 U. S. 562
There can, however, be no doubt about the judgment which we must
render, unless we are prepared to overrule the entire series of
decisions of this Court upon the subject of admiralty jurisdiction
on Western waters, commencing with the case of
The Genesee
Chief in 1851 and terminating with that of
The Moses
Taylor, decided at the present term; [
Footnote 1] for these decisions supply every element
necessary to a sound judgment in the case before us.
The history of the adjudications of this Court on this subject,
which it becomes necessary here to review, is a very interesting
one, and shows with what slowness and hesitation the court arrived
at the conviction of the full powers which the Constitution and
acts of Congress have vested in the federal judiciary. Yet as each
position has been reached, it has been followed by a ready
acquiescence on the part of the profession and of the public
interested in the navigation of the interior waters of the country,
which is strong evidence that the decisions rested on sound
principles, and that the jurisdiction exercised was both beneficial
and acceptable to the classes affected by it.
From the organization of the government until the era of
steamboat navigation, it is not strange that no question of this
kind came before this Court. The commerce carried on upon the
inland waters prior to that time was so small that cases were not
likely to arise requiring the aid of admiralty courts. But with the
vast increase of inland navigation consequent upon the use of
steamboats, and the development of wealth on the borders of the
rivers, which thus became the great water highways of an immense
commerce, the necessity for an admiralty court, and the value of
admiralty principles in settling controversies growing out of this
system of transportation, began to be felt.
Accordingly we find in the case of
The
Steamboat Thomas Jefferson, reported in 10 Wheat.
428, that an attempt was made to invoke the jurisdiction in the
case of a steamboat making a voyage from Shippingport, in Kentucky,
to a point
Page 71 U. S. 563
some distance up the Missouri River and back again. This Court
seems not to have been impressed with the importance of the
principle it was called upon to decide, as indeed no one could then
anticipate the immense interests to arise in future which by the
rulings in that case were turned away from the forum of the federal
courts. Apparently without much consideration -- certainly without
anything like the cogent argument and ample illustration which the
subject has since received here -- the Court declared that no act
of Congress had conferred admiralty jurisdiction in cases arising
above the ebb and flow of the tide.
In the case of
The Steamboat
Orleans, in 11 Pet. 175, the Court again ruled that
the district court had no jurisdiction in admiralty, because the
vessel which was the subject of the libel was engaged in interior
navigation and trade, and not on tidewaters. The opinion on this
subject, as in the case of
The Thomas Jefferson, consisted
of a mere announcement of the rule, without any argument or
reference to authority to support it.
The case of
Waring v.
Clark, 8 How. 441, grew out of a collision within
the ebb and flow of the tide on the Mississippi River, but also
infra corpus comitatus. The jurisdiction was maintained on
the one side and denied on the other with much confidence. The
Court gave it a very extended consideration, and three of the
judges dissented from the opinion of the Court, which held that
there was jurisdiction. The question of jurisdiction above
tidewater was not raised, but the absence of such jurisdiction
seems to be implied by the arguments of the Court as well as of the
dissenting judges.
The next case in order of time,
The
Genessee Chief, 12 How. 457, is by far the most
important of the series, for it overrules all the previous
decisions limiting the admiralty jurisdiction to tidewater and
asserts the broad doctrine that the principles of that
jurisdiction, as conferred on the federal courts by the
Constitution, extend wherever ships float and navigation
successfully aids commerce, whether internal or external.
Page 71 U. S. 564
That case arose under an Act of Congress approved February 26,
1845, [
Footnote 2] which
provides that
"The district courts of the United States shall have, possess,
and exercise the same jurisdiction in matters of contract and tort
arising in, upon, or concerning steamboats, or other vessels of
twenty tons burden and upwards, enrolled and licensed for the
coasting trade, and at the time employed in navigation between
ports and places, in different states and territories, upon the
lakes and navigable waters connecting said lakes, as is now
possessed and exercised by the said courts in cases of like
steamboats and other vessels employed in navigation and commerce
upon the high seas and tidewaters within the admiralty and maritime
jurisdiction of the United States."
The
Genesee Chief was libeled under this act for
damages arising from a collision on Lake Ontario. A decree having
been rendered against the vessel, the claimants appealed to this
Court.
It was urged here that the act under which the proceeding was
had was unconstitutional.
1st. Because the act was not a regulation of commerce, and was
not therefore within the commercial clause of the Constitution.
2d. Because the constitutional grant of admiralty powers did not
extend to cases originating above tidewater, and Congress could not
extend it by legislation.
The Court concurred in the first of these propositions that the
act could not be supported as a regulation of commerce. The Chief
Justice, who delivered the opinion, then entered into a masterly
analysis of the argument by which it was maintained that the
admiralty power conferred by the federal Constitution did not
extend beyond tidewater in our rivers and lakes.
This argument assumed that, in determining the limits of those
powers, we were bound by the rule which governed the Admiralty
Court of Great Britain on the same subject at the time our
Constitution was adopted. And it was said
Page 71 U. S. 565
that the limit of the court's power in that country was the ebb
and flow of the tide.
This was conceded to be true as a matter of fact, but the Chief
Justice demonstrated that the reason of this rule was that the
limit of the tide in all the waters of England was at the same time
the limit of practicable navigation, and that as there could be no
use for an admiralty jurisdiction where there could be no
navigation, this
test of the navigability of those waters
became substituted as the rule, instead of the navigability itself.
Such a rule he showed could have no pertinency to the rivers and
lakes of this country, for here no such test existed. Many of our
rivers could be navigated as successfully and as profitably for a
thousand miles above tidewater as they could below, and he showed
the absurdity of adoption as the test of admiralty jurisdiction in
this country an artificial rule which was founded on a reason in
England that did not exist here. The true rule in both countries
was the navigable capacity of the stream, and as this was
ascertained in England by a test which was wholly inapplicable
here, we could not be governed by it. The cases of
The Thomas
Jefferson and
The Steamboat Orleans, already referred
to, were then examined and overruled.
This opinion received the assent of all the members of the Court
except one.
Although the case arose under the act of 1845, already cited,
which in its terms is expressly limited to matters arising upon the
lakes and the navigable waters connecting said lakes, and which the
Chief Justice said was a limitation of the powers conferred
previously on the federal courts, it established principles under
which the district courts of the United States began to exercise
admiralty jurisdiction of matters arising upon all the public
navigable rivers of the interior of the country.
This Court also, at the same term in which the case of
The
Genesee Chief was decided, held in
Fretz v. Bull, in
which the point was raised in argument, that the federal courts had
jurisdiction according to the principles of that case in the matter
of a collision on the Mississippi River above tidewater.
Page 71 U. S. 566
As soon as these decisions became generally known, admiralty
cases increased rapidly in the district courts of the United
States, both on the lakes and rivers of the West. Many members of
the legal profession engaged in these cases, and some of the courts
have from this circumstance assumed, without examination, that the
jurisdiction in admiralty cases arising on the rivers of the
interior of the country is founded on the act of 1845, and such is
perhaps the more general impression in the West. The very learned
court whose judgment we are reviewing has fallen into this mistake
in the opinion which it delivered in the case before us, and it is
repeated here by counsel for the defendant in error.
But the slightest examination of the language of that act will
show that this cannot be so, as it is confined, as we have already
said, to cases arising "on the lakes and navigable waters
connecting said lakes." The jurisdiction upon those waters is
governed by that statute, but its force extends no further.
The jurisdiction thus conferred is in many respects peculiar,
and its exercise is in some important particulars different under
that act from the admiralty jurisdiction conferred by the act of
September 24, 1789.
1. It is limited to vessels of twenty tons burden and upwards
enrolled and licensed for the coasting trade.
2. To vessels employed in commerce and navigation between ports
and places in different states.
3. It grants a jury trial if either party shall demand it.
4. The jurisdiction is not exclusive, but is expressly made
concurrent with such remedies as may be given by state laws.
But the true reason why the admiralty powers of the federal
courts began now to be exercised for the first time in the inland
waters was this: the decision in the case of
The Genesee
Chief having removed the imaginary line of tidewater which had
been supposed to circumscribe the jurisdiction of the admiralty
courts, there existed no longer any reason why the general
admiralty powers conferred on
Page 71 U. S. 567
all the district courts by the ninth section of the Judiciary
Act [
Footnote 3] should not be
exercised wherever there was navigation which could give rise to
admiralty and maritime causes. The Congress which framed that act
-- the first assembled under the Constitution -- seemed to
recognize this more extended view of the jurisdiction in admiralty
by placing under its control cases of seizure of vessels under the
laws of impost, navigation, and trade of the United States when
those seizures were made in waters navigable from the sea by
vessels of ten tons burden or upwards.
The case of
The Magnolia,
20 How. 296, is another important case in the line of decisions
which we have been considering. It was a case of collision
occurring on the Alabama River, far above the ebb and flow of the
tide, on a stream whose course was wholly within the limits of the
state which bears it name. This was thought to present an occasion
when the doctrines announced in the case of
The Genesee
Chief might properly be reconsidered and modified, if not
overruled. Accordingly we find that the argument in favor of the
main proposition decided in that case was restated with much force
in the opinion of the Court, and that a very elaborate opinion was
delivered on behalf of three dissenting judges. The principles
established by the case of
The Genesee Chief were thus
reaffirmed after a careful and full reconsideration. It was also
further decided (which is pertinent to the case before us) that the
jurisdiction in admiralty on the great Western rivers did not
depend upon the Act of February 3, 1845, but that it was founded on
the Act of September 24, 1789. That decision was made ten years
ago, and the jurisdiction, thus firmly established, has been
largely administered by all the district courts of the United
States ever since without question.
At the same time, the state courts have been in the habit of
adjudicating causes which, in the nature of their subject matter,
are identical in every sense with causes which are acknowledged to
be of admiralty and maritime cognizance,
Page 71 U. S. 568
and they have in these causes administered remedies which differ
in no essential respect from the remedies which have heretofore
been considered as peculiar to admiralty courts. This authority has
been exercised under state statutes, and not under any claim of a
general common law power in these courts to such a
jurisdiction.
It is a little singular that at this term of the Court we
should, for the first time, have the question of the right of the
state courts to exercise this jurisdiction, raised by two writs of
error to state courts, remote from each other, the one relating to
a contract to be performed on the Pacific Ocean and the other to a
collision on the Mississippi River. The first of these cases,
The Moses Taylor, had been decided before the present case
was submitted to our consideration.
The main point ruled in that case is that the jurisdiction
conferred by the act of 1789 on the district courts in civil causes
of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction is exclusive by its express
terms, and that this exclusion extends to the state courts. The
language of the ninth section of the act admits of no other
interpretation. It says, after describing the criminal jurisdiction
conferred on the district courts, that they
"shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all civil
causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, including all
seizures under laws of impost, navigation, or trade of the United
States, when the seizures are made on waters which are navigable
from the sea by vessels of ten or more tons burden."
If the Congress of the United States has the right, in providing
for the exercise of the admiralty powers, to which the Constitution
declares the authority of the federal judiciary shall extend, to
make that jurisdiction exclusive, then undoubtedly it has done so
by this act. This branch of the subject has been so fully discussed
in the opinion of the Court in the case just referred to that it is
unnecessary to consider it further in this place.
It must be taken, therefore, as the settled law of this Court
that wherever the district courts of the United States have
original cognizance of admiralty causes by virtue of the act of
1789, that cognizance is exclusive, and no other
Page 71 U. S. 569
court, state or national, can exercise it, with the exception
always of such concurrent remedy as is given by the common law.
This examination of the case, already decided by this Court,
establishes clearly the following propositions:
1. The admiralty jurisdiction, to which the power of the federal
judiciary is by the Constitution declared to extend, is not limited
to tidewater, but covers the entire navigable waters of the United
States.
2. The original jurisdiction in admiralty exercised by the
district courts by virtue of the act of 1789, is exclusive not only
of other federal courts, but of the state courts also.
3. The jurisdiction of admiralty causes arising on the interior
waters of the United States other than the lakes and their
connecting waters is conferred by the Act of September 24,
1789.
4. The admiralty jurisdiction exercised by the same courts on
the lakes and the waters connecting those lakes is governed by the
Act of February 3, 1845.
If the facts of the case before us in this record constitute a
cause of admiralty cognizance, then the remedy, by a direct
proceeding against the vessel, belonged to the federal courts
alone, and was excluded from the state tribunals.
It was a case of collision between two steamboats. The case of
The Magnolia, [
Footnote
4] to which we have before referred, was a case of this
character, and many others have been decided in this Court since
that time. That they were admiralty causes has never been
doubted.
We thus see that every principle which is necessary to a
decision of this case has been already established by this Court in
previous cases. They lead unavoidably to the conclusion that the
state courts of Iowa acted without jurisdiction; that the law of
that state attempting to confer this jurisdiction is void because
it is in conflict with the Act of Congress of September 24, 1789,
and that this act is well authorized by the Constitution of the
United States. Unless
Page 71 U. S. 570
we are prepared to retract the principles established by the
entire series of decisions of this Court on that subject, from and
including the case of
The Genesee Chief down to that of
The Moses Taylor, decided at this term, we cannot escape
this conclusion. The succeeding cases are in reality but the
necessary complement and result of the principles decided in the
case of
The Genesee Chief. The propositions laid down
there, and which were indispensable to sustain the judgment in that
case, bring us logically to the judgment which we must render in
this case. With the doctrines of that case on the subject of the
extent of the admiralty jurisdiction we are satisfied, and should
be disposed to affirm them now if they were open to
controversy.
It may be well here to advert to one or two considerations to
which our attention has been called, but which did not admit of
notice in the course of observation which we have been pursuing
without breaking the sequence of the argument.
1. It is said there is nothing in the record to show that the
Hine was of ten tons burden or upwards, and that therefore
the case is not brought within the jurisdiction of the federal
courts. The observation is made in the opinion of the Supreme Court
of Iowa in reference to the provision of the act of 1845, which
that court supposed to confer jurisdiction on the federal courts in
the present case, if it had such jurisdiction at all. We have
already shown that the jurisdiction is founded on the act of 1789.
That act also speaks of vessels of ten tons burden and upwards, but
not in the same connection that the act of 1845 does. In the latter
act it is made essential to the jurisdiction that the vessel which
is the subject of the contract, or the tort, should be enrolled and
licensed for the coasting trade, and should be of twenty tons
burden or upwards. In the act of 1789 it is declared that the
district courts shall have jurisdiction in admiralty of seizures
for violations of certain laws where such seizures are made on
rivers navigable by vessels of ten tons burden or upwards from the
sea. In the latter case, the phrase is used an describing the
carrying capacity of the
Page 71 U. S. 571
river where the seizure is made. In the former case it relates
to the capacity of the vessel itself.
2. It is said that the statute of Iowa may be fairly construed
as coming within the clause of the ninth section of the act of
1789, which "saves to suitors, in all cases, the right of a common
law remedy where the common law is competent to give it."
But the remedy pursued in the Iowa courts in the case before us
is in no sense a common law remedy. It is a remedy partaking of all
the essential features of an admiralty proceeding
in rem.
The statute provides that the vessel may be used and made defendant
without any proceeding against the owners or even mentioning their
names. That a writ may be issued and the vessel seized on filing a
petition similar in substance to a libel. That after a notice in
the nature of a monition, the vessel may be condemned and an order
made for her sale if the liability is established for which she was
sued. Such is the general character of the steamboat laws of the
Western states.
While the proceeding differs thus from a common law remedy, it
is also essentially different from what are in the West called
suits by attachment, and in some of the older states foreign
attachments. In these cases there is a suit against a personal
defendant by name, and because of inability to serve process on him
on account of nonresidence or for some other reason mentioned in
the various statutes allowing attachments to issue the suit is
commenced by a writ directing the proper officer to attach
sufficient property of the defendant to answer any judgment which
may be rendered against him. This proceeding may be had against an
owner or part owner of a vessel, and his interest thus subjected to
sale in a common law court of the state.
Such actions may also be maintained
in personam against
a defendant in the common law courts as the common law gives, all
in consistence with the grant of admiralty powers in the ninth
section of the Judiciary Act.
But it could not have been the intention of Congress, by the
exception in that section, to give the suitor all such
Page 71 U. S. 572
remedies as might afterwards be enacted by state statutes, for
this would have enabled the states to make the jurisdiction of
their courts concurrent in all cases by simply providing a
statutory remedy for all cases. Thus the exclusive jurisdiction of
the federal courts would be defeated. In the act of 1845, where
Congress does mean this, the language expresses it clearly, for
after saving to the parties, in cases arising under that act, a
right of trial by jury and the right to a concurrent remedy at
common law where it is competent to give it, there is added, "any
concurrent remedy which may be given by the state laws where such
steamer or other vessel is employed."
The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded to the
Supreme Court of Iowa with directions that it be dismissed for want
of jurisdiction.
[
Footnote 1]
Supra, p. <|71 U.S. 411|>411.
[
Footnote 2]
5 Statutes at Large 726.
[
Footnote 3]
1 Statutes at Large 77.
[
Footnote 4]
61 U. S. 20 How.
296.