John McLean

“ No such power can exist with those who are the creatures of the Constitution, clothed with the humbler office of executing the provisions of that instrument. Suppose, at the time of its adoption, the Constitution was universally believed to be defective, in many respects essentially defective, would such a conviction have rendered it less the Constitution? ”

“ It is now discovered that the principles asserted by the admiralty courts in England, or said to have been propounded by the mysterious, unedited, and unproduced proceedings of the colonial vice-admiralty courts, so often avouched here in argument; the dedisions of this court and the provisions of the act of 1845, are all to be thrown aside, as wholly erroneous. That the admiralty power is not to be restricted by its effect upon the territorial, political, or municipal rights and institutions upon which it may be brought to bear, nor by any checks from the authority of the common law. ”

“ Whether an insurance is within the admiralty, has not been considered by this court. It is singular, that while the English admiralty, by its extension, has been placed substantially upon the same basis as our own, ours should be denounced as having a dangerous tendency upon our interests and institutions, and a desire expressed to abandon the enlightened rules of the civil law, and follow the misconstrued statutes of Richard II.
Antiquity has its charms, as it is rarely found in the common walks of professional life ”

“ It is, fact, a regulation of commerce, as it comprehends the duties and powers of masters of vessels, the maritime liens of seamen, of those who furnish supplies to vessels, make advances, &c., and, in short, the knowledge and conduct required of pilots, seamen, masters, and everything pertaining to the sailing and management of a ship. As the terms import, these regulations apply to the water, and not to the land, and are commensurate with the jurisdiction conferred. ”

“ These prosecutions for forfeitures of large and valuable portions of property, under the revenue laws, are highly penal in their consequences; and the Government and its officers are always parties, and deeply concerned in the conviction and forfeiture. And if, by act of Congress or by judicial decisions, the prosecution can be turned over to the admiralty side of the District Court, as being neither a criminal prosecution nor a suit at common law, the trial of the cause is then transferred from a jury of the country to the breast of a single judge. ”

“ And if the last of these extremes be adopted, then there is scarcely an internal water-course, whether in its natural condition, or as improved under the authority and with the resources of the States, or a canal, or a mill-pond, some of which are known to cover many acres of land, (and, as this court can convert rivers without tides into seas, may be metamorphosed into small lakes,) which would not by this doctrine be brought within the grasp of the admiralty. Some of our canals are navigated by steam, and some of them by sails ”

“ Something not unlike this strange idea has, on more than one occasion, been intimated; and with respect to her colonies, strictly subordinate as they are known to have ever been in political and legislative power to the mother country, it has been broadly asserted that these have been released from the restrictions upon the admiralty in the mother country, whilst this emancipation is coupled with the incongruous position that they (and the United States, as once forming a portion of those colonies) are more or less subject to the admiralty regulations of every petty community in the world. ”

“ The people of the several States have retained the popular element of the judicial administration of England, and the attachment of her people to the institutions of local self-government. In Alabama, the 'trial by jury is preserved inviolate,' that being regarded as 'an essential principle of liberty and free government.' In the court of admiralty the people have no place as jurors. ”

“ If the dogma of judges in regard to the system of laws to be administered prevails, then this whole class of cases may be drawn ad aliud examen, and placed under the dominion of a foreign code, whether they arise among citizens or others. The States are deprived of the power to mould their own laws in respect of persons and things within their limits, and which are appropriately subject to their sovereignty. ”

“ The navigators of the Alabama river must have been more prudent and skilful than those of the North, or their voyages were less frequent, if the above collision is the first that has occurred on the Alabama river.
It is true, the Magnolia was engaged in a commerce strictly within the State; but this does not exonerate her, as the trespass was on a vessel protected by the admiralty law. Cases have frequently occurred on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, where steamboats, having run down and sunk flat-boats, were held responsible for the injury in the admiralty. ”

“ To ascertain the scope of the opinion, it is necessary to examine the argument of the court, and the worth of the objection taken to the jurisdiction and combated.
The lakes are certainly not seas according to the signification of that word in the law of nations or the Admiral's commission. They are not common highways for all nations, open to the ships of all, and exempted from the municipal regulation and control of any. ”

“ Dane; the former of whom, in the 1st vol. of his Commentaries, p. 376, holds this language: 'Congress had a right, in their discretion, to make all seizures and forfeitures cognizable in the District Courts; but it may be a question whether they had any right to declare them to be cases of admiralty jurisdiction, if they were not so by the law of the land when the Constitution was made. The Constitution secures to the citizen trial by jury in all criminal prosecutions, and in all civil suits at common law where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars. ”

“ But it is felt that in the discharge of official obligation there may be motives much higher than either the prospect or the attainment of success can supply; and it may be accepted as a moral axiom, that he who, under convictions of duty, cannot steadily oppose his exertions, though feeble and unaided, to the march of power, when believed to be wrongful, however overshadowing it may appear, must be an unsafe depositary of either public or private confidence. ”

“ I cannot, without a sense of delinquency, omit any occasion of protesting against what to my mind is an abuse of the greatest magnitude, and one which, hopeless as at present the prospect of remedy may appear, it would seem could require nothing but attention to its character and tendencies to insure a corrective. ”

“ Few, comparatively, of the attributes of sovereignty and equality, presupposed to have existed in those by whom the Federal Government was created, have remained perfectly intact and exempt from aggression by their own creature ”

“ The Federal courts have no cognizance of common-law offences, on the land or on the water. Jurisdiction has been conferred on them of common law and chancery in specified cases, in every State and Territory of the Union ”

“ In 1627, the office, with its dignity and privileges, was abolished; in 1668, it was revived by Louis XIV, and conferred upon a member of the royal family; in 1791, it was suppressed, and its judicial establishment disappeared from history, other courts and authorities being established to perform their functions. ”