Felix Frankfurter

“ In rejecting abdication of all responsibility by this Court for uniformities in marine insurance and its complete surrender to the States, one is not required to embrace another absolute, complete absorption by this Court of the field of marine insurance and entire exclusion of the States. It is not necessary to assert that uniformity, if it be required in any case, is required in all cases cognizable in admiralty-whether the craft was for business or pleasure, touched in five states, five nations or never left the confines of an inland lake. ”

“ The deceptive lure of certainty and comprehensive symmetry should not be permitted to canceal the fact that admiralty's expansion beyond 'the ebb and flow of the tides' has been a response to demands more inclusive than those for mechanical uniformity.
Under the distribution of power between national authority and local law, admiralty has developed for more than a hundred years by rulings of the Court, but not by absolutes either of abstension or extension. ”

“ The business of marine insurance often may be so related to the success of many manifestations of commercial maritime endeavor as to demand application of a uniform rule of law designed to eliminate the vagaries of state law and to keep harmony with the marine insurance laws of other great maritime powers. ”