Felix Frankfurter

“ The statute is phrased in terms which, as a matter of inert language, lifeless words detached from the interpretive setting of history, legal lore, and due regard for the interests of our federal system, may be used as playthings with which to reconstruct the Act to include cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. If the history of the interpretation of judiciary legislation teaches anything, it teaches the duty to reject treating such statutes as a wooden set of self-sufficient words-a failing to which the Court has not been subject since the Pacific Railroad Removal Cases. ”

“ To impose on ships the duty of shifting from one standard of compensation to another as the vessel passes the boundaries of territorial waters would be not only an onerous but also an unduly speculative burden, disruptive of international commerce and without basis in the expressed policies of this country. The amount and type of recovery which a foreign seaman may receive from his foreign employer while sailing on a foreign ship should not depend on the wholly fortuitous circumstance of the place of injury. ”

“ Abstractly stated, the problem is the ordinary task of a court to apply the words of a statute according to their proper construction. But 'proper construction' is not satisfied by taking the words as if they were self-contained phrases. So considered, the words do not yield the meaning of the statute. The words we have to construe are not only words with a history. They express an enactment that is part of a serial, and a serial that must be related to Article III of the Constitution, the watershed of all judiciary legislation, and to the enactments which have derived from that Article. ”

“ Although the corpus of admiralty law is federal in the sense that it derives from the implications of Article III evolved by the courts, to claim that all enforced rights pertaining to matters maritime are rooted in federal law is a destructive oversimplification of the highly intricate interplay of the States and the National Government in their regulation of maritime commerce. It is true that state law must yield to the needs of a uniform federal maritime law when this Court finds inroads on a harmonious system. ”

“ There is not the slightest indication of any intention, or of any professional or lay demands for a change in the time-sanctioned mode of trying suits in admiralty without a jury, from which it can be inferred that by the new grant of jurisdiction of cases 'arising under the Constitution or laws' a drastic innovation was impliedly introduced in admiralty procedure, whereby Congress changed the method by which federal courts had administered admiralty law for almost a century. ”

“ The necessity for jurisdictional determinations couched in terms of 'state' or 'federal law' would destroy that salutary flexibility which enables the courts to deal with source-of-law problems in light of the necessities illuminated by the particular question to be answered. Certainly sound judicial policy does not encourage a situation which necessitates constant adjudication of the boundaries of state and federal competence. ”

“ Of course, due regard must be had for the differing interests advanced by varied aspects of maritime law. But the similarity in purpose and function of the Jones Act and the general maritime principles of compensation for personal injury, admit of no rational differentiation of treatment for choice of law purposes. Thus the reasoning of Lauritzen v. Larsen governs all claims here. [54]
We are not here dealing with the sovereign power of the United States to apply its law to situations involving one or more foreign contacts. ”

“ The history of archeology is replete with the unearthing of riches buried for centuries. Our legal history does not, however, offer a single archeological discovery of new, revolutionary meaning in reading an old judiciary enactment. #fn27a [28] The presumption is powerful that such a far-reaching, dislocating construction as petitioner would now have us find in the Act of 1875 was not uncovered by judges, lawyers or scholars for seventy-five years because it is not there. ”

“ The Spanish law provides Romero with a lifetime pension of 35% to 55% of his seaman's wages which may be increased by one-half if the negligence of the shipowner is established; it also allows the recovery of the Spanish counterpart of maintenance and cure. These rights under the Spanish law may be enforced through the Spanish consul in New York.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, 244 F.2d 409. ”

“ Although the place of injury has often been deemed determinative of the choice of law in municipal conflict of laws, such a rule does not fit the accommodations that become relevant in fair and prudent regard for the interests of foreign nations in the regulation of their own ships and their own nationals, and the effect upon our interests of our treatment of the legitimate interests of foreign nations. ”

“ Typical also of the consequences that are implicit in this proposed modification of maritime jurisdiction, is the restriction of venue that would result from this novel interpretation of § 1331 of the Act of 1875. Litigants of diverse citizenship are now able to invoke the federal law forum for the trial of saving-clause cases. Such litigants are aided in their search for a federal forum by the liberality of the venue provisions applicable to actions based on diversity of citizenship. ”

“ Respondents Garcia & Diaz and Quin Lumber Company, New York corporations, and International Terminal Operating Company, a Delaware corporation, are of diverse citizenship from the petitioner, a Spanish subject. Since the Jones Act provides an independent basis of federal jurisdiction over the non-diverse respondent, Compania Trasatlantica, the rule of Strawbridge v. Curtiss, 3 Cranch 267, 2 L.Ed. 435, does not require dismissal of the claims against the diverse respondents. ”

“ The substantive law on which these claims are based derives from the third provision of Art. III, § 2, cl. 1. Without that constitutional grant Romero would have no federal claim to assert. Cf. 2 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, § 1672.↑ See Frankfurter and Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court (1928) , 64-65; Chadbourn and Levin, Original Jurisdiction of Federal Questions, 90 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 639, 644-645 (1942) .↑ Of course, in a few instances, Congress has provided the federal admiralty courts with a specific statutory jurisdiction. ”

“ Support is ultimately reduced, one is compelled to say, to empty logic, reflecting a formal syllogism. The argument may thus be fairly summarized. It was not until recently, in a line of decision culminating in Pope & Talbot, Inc., v. ”