severity of maritime contracts and moderate exorbitant demands. As the cognizance of the District Courts, in civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, is exclusive of all others, no state court can entertain such cases; nor can a state legislature confer jurisdiction upon a state court to enforce a maritime lien by a suit or proceeding in rem, which is the distinguishing feature of a suit in admiralty. A suit in rem may be brought in any district where the offending thing may be found, and in personam where the defendant resides. No process can issue from the District Court until the person or corporation that has a maritime suit to prosecute, files a libel containing a statement of the case upon which is founded the right to recover, closing with a prayer for proper relief. In suits by the Government the complaint is called an information, or libel of information. The colonial courts of admiralty, as they existed at the time of the Revolution, were continued by the States of New York and Massachusetts. New courts of admiralty were established by Maryland in 1776, Pennsylvania in 1778, Virginia in 1779, and in New Jersey in 1781. Some of the other states abolished them altogether. The Virginia Act expressly provided that the three judges of the Court of Admiralty were to be "governed in their proceedings by the regulations of the Congress of the United States of America; by the acts of the general assembly; by the laws of Oleron and the Rhodian and the Imperial laws, so far as they have been heretofore observed in the English Courts of Admiralty; and by the laws of nature and the nations." Even after the Constitution had extended the Federal judicial power to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, the State of New York, in 1807, replaced the Colonial Court with a Justice's Court for the City of New York, which was given jurisdiction in special marine cases but had no authority to proceed, as a Court of Admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. The name of this tribunal was afterwards changed to that of Marine Court, and later it became known as the City Court of the City of New York, and as such continues to have authority in the following marine causes: An action in favor of a person, belonging to a vessel in the merchant service, against the owner, master or commander thereof, for the reasonable value of services, or for the breach of a contract to pay for services, rendered or to be rendered on board the vessel, during a voyage, wholly or partly performed, or intended to be performed by it. Also an action in favor of or against a person, belonging to or on board a vessel in the merchant service to recover damages for assault, battery, or false imprisonment, committed on board the vessel, on the high seas, or in a place without the United States. ... . Robert E. Lewis. .Hartford.. .Wilmington. .... Pensacola... . Jacksonville...... 1872 . Macon. .Honolulu. .... Honolulu . ..Boisé... 1885 1909 1911 1907 CHAPTER VII COMMERCE COURT CUSTOMS COURT OF APPEALS COURT OF CLAIMS That portion of the so-called Administration Railroad Bill creating a Court of Commerce was passed by Congress and approved by President Taft on the eighteenth of June, 1910. The act is entitled "An Act to create a Commerce Court, and to amend the Act entitled 'An Act to regulate commerce' approved February 4, 1887, as heretofore amended, and for other purposes." The court was created in the face of the opposition of both the Democrats and the Republican insurgents, and its continued existence has been seriously threatened from time to time by the same forces. The new tribunal was represented as unnecessary and as a grievous burden on the taxpayers of the country. The Interstate Commerce Commission, said its opponents, could do all the work which the Commerce Court was designed to accomplish with appeals as hitherto through the regular channels of the Circuit Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals to the United States Supreme Court. It was feared that railway interests would dominate the appointments to the Commerce Court bench. "It seems to us fundamentally wrong," said the Senate minority report, "to create a court whose sole work will be the trial of railway cases. Without enlarging upon the subject, we merely remind the Senate of the tremendous influences that will inevitably surround the selection of such a tribunal. It is far better for the country that all such controversies shall be disposed of by regularly constituted judicial tribunals, proceeding in the orderly established way." In December, 1911, United States Senator Miles Poindexter of Washington introduced a bill in the Senate to |