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ralty jurisdiction is essential * in all such cases, for the * 380 process of a court of common law cannot directly reach the thing in specie. If the law raises a lien for a maritime service, a court of admiralty has power to carry it into effect. (a) 1 The act of Congress of July 20, 1790, relative to seamen, sec. 6, has given a specific and summary relief for seamen in the recovery of wages, by authorizing the district judge, or, in his absence, a magistrate, to summon the master before him, and to attach the vessel as security for the wages. (b)

We have now finished a general survey of the admiralty jurisdiction of the district courts in civil and criminal cases, and both as an instance and a prize court. It would not be consistent with the plan of these elementary disquisitions to give a detailed sketch of the course of proceeding, and of the peculiar practice in the admiralty courts. The proceedings are according to the course of the civil law, and are remarkable for their comprehensive brevity, celerity, and simplicity. Nothing can be more mond v. Essex F. & M. Ins. Co., 4 Mason, 196, Mr. Justice Story considered it to be settled jurisdiction of the admiralty, that the master could sue there in personam for his wages, and the seamen in rem as well as in personam for their wages. This appears to be a well-established distinction.

(a) Phillips v. Scattergood, Gilpin, 1. No prior replevin or attachment of the property under any state court process can control the paramount jurisdiction of the admiralty in rem, for freight or seamen's wages, or on a bottomry bond. Certain Logs of Mahogany, 2 Sumner, 589. A person hired for service as one of the crew on board of a canal-boat, under a coasting license, in the coal trade from the tide waters of the river Delaware, through the Raritan Canal, to the tide waters in the harbor of New York, performs service of a maritime character, and has a lien on the vessel for his wages, and may proceed in rem for the same. Weizer v. Coal Boat D. C. Salisbury,

D. C. U. S. New York, November, 1844.

(b) See iii. 169-171, as to the lien of material-men. Ib., as to the remedy for seamen's wages. Material-men and workmen, having liens on vessels under state laws, may enforce them in the District Court as well as in a state court, at their election, as the jurisdiction is in that case concurrent. Davis v. A New Brig, Gilpin, 473. In the case of Heyer v. The Schooner Wave, in the District Court of the Southern District of New York, 2 Paine, 131, the plaintiffs, as branch or deputy pilots, libelled the vessel for salvage, in relieving her in distress within the harbor of New York, and salvage was allowed. On appeal to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, the decree was reversed, on the ground that the act of Congress of August 7, 1789, c. 9, had adopted the pilotage laws of the states respectively, temporarily, and had not since interfered, and that the remedy for the pilots was in the state courts, and that the District Court had no jurisdiction in the case of pilotage arising within the waters of the states, until Congress should give it, as they had the right to do. See infra, iii. 176, note.

1 Ante, 369, n. 1.

unlike, in its process, pleadings, proof, trial, and remedy, than the practice of the courts of admiralty and of the courts of common law. (c)

* 381

*The jurisdiction of the District Court, when proceeding as a court of common law, extends to all minor crimes and offences cognizable under the authority of the United States, and which are not strictly of admiralty cognizance; and to all seizures on land, and on waters not navigable from the sea; and to all suits for penalties and forfeitures there incurred; and to all suits by aliens, for torts done in violation of the law of nations, or of a treaty; and to suits against consuls and vice-consuls; and to all suits at common law, where the United States sue, and the matter in dispute amounts to one hundred dollars. (a) It has jurisdiction, likewise, of proceedings to repeal patents obtained surreptitiously, or upon false suggestions. This was given by the act of Congress of February 21, 1793, chap. ii., and it is a jurisdiction that leads (c) The act of Congress of May 8, 1792, c. 36, sec. 2, declared that the form of writs, executions, and other processes, except their style, in suits of admiralty and mari. time jurisdiction, should be according to the principles, rules, and usages which belong to courts of admiralty, as contradistinguished from courts of common law, subject to alterations and additions by the said courts, and to regulations to be prescribed by the Supreme Court. For a knowledge of the admiralty practice, I would refer the student to Clerke's Practice of the Court of Admiralty in England, which is a work of undoubted credit; and in 1809 a new edition was published in this country by Mr. Hall, with an appendix of precedents. I would also refer him to the 2d volume of Brown's Civil and Admiralty Law, and to the appendix to the 1st and 2d volumes of Mr. Wheaton's Reports, where he will find the practice of the instance and prize courts digested and summarily explained. See also the Treatise of Mr. Dunlap, on Admiralty Practice. He was formerly attorney of the United States for Massachu setts; and his work is pronounced, by the most competent judges, to be learned, accurate, and well-digested. See also the case of Lane v. Townsend, in the District Court of Maine, in 1835, Ware, 287, in which the learned judge defines the nature and effect of stipulations in the admiralty. That case contains a learned examination of the mode of commencing a suit, and of the prætorian stipulations required of the defendant in the Roman law, and it satisfactorily shows great inaccuracy in Brown's view of the subjects of the stipulations, cautions, or securities required in the progress of the suit by the practice of the Roman forum. In the case also of Hutson . Jordan, Ware, 385, 395, the admiralty practice, as derived from the Roman law and the civil law courts, is discussed with the customary learning and ability of the distinguished judge. So also the practice on the joinder of different actions of different natures in one libel, ib. 427. See, in 3 N. Y. Legal Observer, 357, and in the Law Reporter for March, 1846, the rules of practice in the courts of the United States, in causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction on the instance side of the court, established in pursuance of the act of Congress of 23d August, 1842, c. 188.

5. Civil Jurisdiction of the District Courts.

(a) Judiciary Act of September, 1789, sec. 9.

frequently to the most intricate, nice, and perplexed investigations, respecting the originality of inventions and improvements in complicated machinery. (b) It was made a question in the District Court of New York, in the case Ex parte Wood, whether the process to be awarded to repeal the patent was not in the nature of a scire facias at common law, upon which issue of fact might be taken and tried by a jury. The district judge decided, that the proceeding was summary, upon a rule to show cause, and that no process of scire facias was afterwards admissible. But upon appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, (c) the decree of the District Court was reversed, and the District Court was directed by mandamus to enter upon record the proceedings in the cause antecedent to the granting of the rule to show cause why process should not issue to repeal the patent. The District Court was further directed to award process, in the nature of a scire facias, to the patentee, to show cause why the patent should not be repealed; and upon

*

the return of the process, the court was to proceed to try * 382 the cause upon the pleadings of the parties, and the issue

of law or fact joined thereon, as the case might be; and that if the issue be an issue of fact, the trial thereof was to be by jury, according to the course of the common law.

This was a just and liberal decision of the Supreme Court; and it was observed, in the opinion which was pronounced, that it was not lightly to be presumed that Congress, in this class of patent cases, placed peculiarly within their patronage and protection, involving some of the dearest and most valuable rights which society acknowledges, and the Constitution itself meant to favor, would institute a new and summary process, which should finally adjudge upon those rights without a trial by jury, without a right of appeal, and without any of those guards with which, in equity suits, it has fenced round the general administration of justice. The Supreme Court then went into an analytical examination of the 10th section of the act of 1793, on which the claim of summary jurisdiction rested, and vindicated the construction which they assumed in opposition to that taken by the District Court.

The jurisdiction of the judges of the district courts, in cases. of bankruptcy, has presented for consideration some important (b) See vol. ii. 368.

(c) 9 Wheaton, 603.

questions on the point of jurisdiction. We have no bankrupt system in existence under the government of the United States: but there may be some lingering traces of business yet arising and undetermined, under the Bankrupt Act of the year 1800, and many questions may be expected to arise under the Bankrupt Act of 1841, which has been recently repealed. (a) In the case of Comfort Sands, (b) in the District Court of New York, it was observed that in England the sole power of directing the execution, and controlling the administration of the bank*383 rupt system in all its departments* and in every stage of the proceeding, resided in the lord chancellor.

This jurisdiction of the English chancellor is not in the court of chancery, but in the individual who holds the great seal; and it is exercised summarily upon petition, and his judgment upon the petition is without appeal, unless the chancellor, in his discretion, allows a bill to be filed, in order to found an appeal thereon. The judge then proceeded to examine the several provisions of the Bankrupt Act of the United States of 1800, in order to show, that, upon the principles of construction adopted in England, the district judge had the same jurisdiction in cases of bankruptcy as is exercised by the lord chancellor. The same course of reasoning which sustains the jurisdiction of the one would confer that of the other. He insisted that the jurisdiction was given, not to the District Court, but to the individual who happened to hold the office of district judge, and that, consequently, all his decisions in bankruptcy were without appeal, for appeals lie only from the decrees of the District Court. But that extraordinary doctrine has since been overruled; and it has been held (a) that the circuit courts of the United States had jurisdiction of matters arising under the bankrupt law, and the district courts had not exclusive jurisdiction over the entire execution of such laws. They could not remove the assignees, nor compel them to account. An appeal lay in proceedings under the Bankrupt Act from the district to the circuit courts, and the state courts had a concurrent jurisdiction in matters of account between the bankrupt and his creditors, and which has been freely and extensively exercised. (b)

(a) See infra, ii. 391.

(a) Lucas v. Morris, 1 Paine, 396.

(b) United States Law Journal, i. 15.

(b) See the case of Sands v. Codwise, 4 Johns. 536. In the case Ex parte Christy,

6. Territorial Courts of the United States. With respect to the vast territories belonging to the United States, Congress have assumed to exercise over them supreme powers of * 384 sovereignty. Exclusive and unlimited power of legislation is given to Congress by the Constitution, and sanctioned by judicial decisions. (a) Congress was, by the Constitution, (b) clothed with authority "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles. square) as might, by cession of particular states and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government of the United States." The District of Columbia was created for that purpose, under cessions from the states of Maryland and Virginia. The territorial jurisdiction of that district, known as the District of Columbia, and which embraces the city of Washington, and throws its municipal protection over all the officers and agents of the government of the United States, is extremely important. (c)(x) 3 How. 292, it was held that the Supreme Court had no revising power over the decrees of the District Court sitting in bankruptcy, under the act of 1841; but it had over proceedings as a court of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. The District Court, when sitting in bankruptcy, had plenary power over liens and mortgages on the bankrupt's property, and summarily to decide on their validity and extent, and may operate upon the parties in the state courts by injunction, and in that way control the proceedings in the state courts. S. C. But in the case of Peck v. Jenness, Sup. Court of New Hampshire, July, 1845 [16 N. H. 516], it was adjudged that the Bankrupt Act of 1841 neither limited nor enlarged the jurisdiction of the state courts, and that creditors of a bankrupt may pursue their remedies in the state courts, notwithstanding their claims are debts capable of being asserted under the bankruptcy, and that mortgages and liens saved by the Bankrupt Act may be enforced in the state courts, and that the district courts cannot interfere with or control the exercise of it. See supra, 247, and infra, 411. On the other hand, in Lewis v. Fisk, 6 Rob. (La.), 159, it was held that a decree of bankruptcy, under the act of 1841, devested all jurisdiction in the state courts, and they had no authority to decide questions involving the adjustment of privileges and liens among the creditors of the bankrupt, or the distribution of the funds of the esAll the estate of the bankrupt is, by the decree of bankruptcy, ipso facto vested in the assignee.

tate.

(a) Const. art. 4, sec. 3; American Ins. Co. v. Canter, 1 Peters, 511. See also supra, 258.

(b) Art. 1, sec. 8, 17.

(c) The powers of the judiciary of the District of Columbia were ably discussed and declared by Ch. J. Cranch, in the Circuit Court of that district, on the 6th of June, 1837, in the case of the United States, ex relat. Stokes, Stocktons, and Moore v.

(x) Congress cannot delegate general legislative power to the local government of the District of Columbia. Roach v. Van Riswick, 4 MacArthur, 171.

By the Act of April 7, 1874, ch. 80, §2 (18 St. at L. 27), the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over the judgments and decrees of the Territorial

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