CURRENT LITERATURE. Reports of Cases in the Vice Admiralty of the Province of New York and in the Court of Admiralty of the State of New York 17151788 with an historical introduction and appendix, edited by Charles Merrill Hough, United States Circuit Judge. Yale University Press, 1925. $5.00. Note by HON. HENRY G. WARD. The history of admiralty jurisdiction in England is set forth in Mr. Justice Story's masterly opinion in De Lovio vs. Boit, 2 Gall. 398; Fed. Cas. No. 3776, in which he describes how the jealousy of the courts of common law restricted the jurisdiction by their construction of the statutes of Richard II in relation to it. On the other hand the Vice-Admiralty Courts of this locality in colonial times and the Admiralty Courts after the Revolution worked out a much broader jurisdiction here. The cases reported in this volume show how this was accomplished. The judges decided the Qui Tam actions on behalf of the informer as well as of others for penalties and forfeitures, the causes of salvage, seamen's wages, assaults on the high seas and others, with practically no reference to precedents in their opinions. Acting thus independently, and evidently without fear of the local common law courts or of writs of prohibition, they developed here a jurisdiction and procedure in admiralty which by the early part of the 19th century became substantially like our present system. It is to Judge Hough's labor in looking up, separating and examining the old, frail and often almost illegible papers that remain on file in the office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York and to the generosity of members of the admiralty bar of this city that this volume permanently preserves the cases reported, which might in a short time have become unintelligible because of the loss or destruction of papers on file necessary for the preparation of the head notes and statements of fact accompanying the judgments rendered. It was a labor of love 1925 A. M. C. and a notable contribution to the history of our admiralty jurisdiction and procedure, as is happily expressed in the dedication of the volume: To Certain of my brethren of the Bar who kindly said that these reports were worthy of print; who long and piously preserved the old records: Miss Caroline Caldicott Helm who faithfully prepared them for printing: To them and each of them whose generous aid made my work a pleasure: This book is dedicated. |