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Lost At Sea: The Continuing Decline Of The Supreme Court In Admiralty, Michael Sevel

University of Miami Law Review

For the first 200 years of its history, the United States Supreme Court served as the primary leader in the development of, and its cases the primary source of, the admiralty and maritime law of the United States. That appears to be changing. The Court’s admiralty cases over the last quarter century indicate that it is slowly giving up its traditional leading role in creating and developing rules of admiralty law, and instead deferring to Congress to make those rules, a trend that is tantamount to abandoning its Article III constitutional duty to serve as the country’s only national admiralty …