United States v. Matson Nav. Co. The Louie III

A unique body of law particularly appropriate to the regulation and settlement of the special problems arising out of sea navigation and commerce has been developed for the “men who go down to the sea in ships” and for the merchants who use the waterways of the world as highways. The maritime law has grown from ancient times to the present day, changing with changing times to meet the objective of .common justice. Landlubber courts, nurtured in the common law of their several countries, early conceded litigation relating to the sea to a specialty court commonly called “Court of Admiralty”. Civilization has not progressed evenly with all peoples and the border separating right from wrong, or justice from injustice, is neither definite nor static. Plence, “[t]he precise scope of admiralty jurisdiction is not a matter of obvious principle or of very accurate history”. The Blackheath, 1904, 195 U.S. 361, 365 , 25 S.Ct. 46, 47 , 49 L.Ed. 236 .

When the creation of a supreme sovereignty by the compact of thirteen sovereign states was memorialized by the Constitution of the United States, admiralty law was therein recognized as a national interest and “all Cases of admiralty and…