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Flying the Stratified Skies
Travel has always served to remind us of the divisions our “classless society” tries so hard to downplay. Sam Walton may have driven an old truck, but you’d be hard-pressed to find most top executives...
View ArticleThe Case Against Delaware
The state of Delaware has just won a major dispute with New Jersey in the Supreme Court, over a vigorous dissent by Justice Scalia. The dispute concerned New Jersey’s plan to build a “huge...
View ArticleParrots and the Jolly Roger
Piracy is back in the news, and it’s not the intellectual kind. This is great for admiralty professors, and so I thought I’d take advantage of this brief moment in the sun to talk about some general...
View ArticlePirate Democracy
I just finished a fun book that I want to recommend. It’s “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates” by Peter T. Leeson. The author explores the Golden Age of Piracy (circa 1720) and shows...
View ArticleFun Cases That You Don’t Know
Since it’s that time of year (by which I mean exam time), I thought I’d write a recurring series of posts on neat cases that I use in my courses but are relatively unknown. These will mostly be...
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Fun Cases You’ve Never Heard of — Part II
United States v. Palmer, 16 U.S. (3 Wheat.) 610 (1818) is almost certainly the best case on statutory interpretation that you can use in the classroom. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it...
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Arrr . . . matey!
Yesterday I became the Chair of the AALS Section on Admiralty and Maritime Law. It was a bitter, hard-fought campaign in which I was the only volunteer. So my main task is to put together a panel for...
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Pirates and Terrorists
Officials in Washington are still struggling with how to deal with the alleged terrorists detained in Guantanamo. One day the issue is whether some of them should be tried in a civilian court and, if...
View ArticleGeneral Average and Takings
One of the maritime doctrines that I enjoy teaching is the general average. This principle applies when cargo is voluntarily sacrificed by the crew in a successful effort to save a ship in distress...
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Limitation of Liability and the Gulf Oil Spill
Transocean (RIG), which owns the platform that exploded in the Gulf and caused the massive ongoing oil spill, is seeking to invoke the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. This law, which has never...
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Punitive Damages in Maritime Law
As the Gulf disaster continues, it is worth thinking about about the potential liability of BP and other parties. Following the Exxon Valdez disaster, the Supreme Court held, acting in its capacity as...
View ArticleThoughts on the Gulf Spill
In anticipation of the President’s speech tonight, I thought I’d make some observations about the situation in the Gulf. 1. When I taught Admiralty last semester, I pointed out to my students that...
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AALS Panel on Admiralty and Maritime Law
As the AALS Section Chair for Admiralty and Maritime Law, I am sorry to announce that our panel at the upcoming Annual Meeting is cancelled. This was due to the illness of one of the panelists and the...
View ArticleAnother Interesting Case That You’ve Never Heard Of
I am in the process of revising my admiralty syllabus, and one case that I’m going to teach next year is Kotch v. Board of River Boat Pilots Com’rs for the Port of New Orleans 330 U.S. 552 (1947)....
View ArticleThe Steamboat Magnolia
Speaking of Admiralty, I want to highlight a terrific symposium that the Saint Louis University Law Journal did on “Teaching Admiralty” in its Winter 2011 Issue. There are many fantastic essays here,...
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The Greatest Supreme Court Opinion?
This week in my Admiralty class I taught my favorite case–Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375 (1970). This unanimous opinion, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, held that a...
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Unseaworthiness and Product Liability
I thought I’d make the following observation for those of you who study or work on product liability issues. The maritime equivalent of product liability is the unseaworthiness action, which is based...
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The 100th Anniversary of the Titanic
Naturally, on this day my thoughts turn to the litigation surrounding Titanic. Among the leading examples are: 1. Oceanic Steam Nav. Co. v. Mellor, 233 U.S. 718 (1914). The Supreme Court, in an...
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What is a Vessel?
So naturally I was interested in Monday’s oral argument on the question of what counts as a vessel for certain purposes in admiralty. This is a fun exercise in class, as you quiz students about things...
View ArticleControlling Ghosts
According to a story in The Economist that Deven just flagged, shippers are experimenting with the use of “ghost” vessels without crews to move cargo. Reasons include greater safety and lower costs,...
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