Posted: April 25th, 2024

Evolution of Admiralty Courts in the UK and their Historical Significance

Evolution of Admiralty Courts in the UK and their Historical Significance

2. Development of Admiralty Courts
Originally, the courts did not have a fixed location. They followed the king and were held in various towns and cities as the king saw fit. If the king was abroad or residing at a particular location for any length of time, he might delegate his jurisdiction in a commission. The proceedings before the court were recorded in the court books and decrees and orders were pronounced to the parties involved. Civil law advocates soon became the specialist practitioners of the court and were very powerful figures in the administration of justice. The court’s early work involved the trial of cases on land which mariners and merchants had become involved in, and it did not take much time for the court to become associated with cases that took place at sea. This was due to the fact that the court’s jurisdiction was based on the type of law which was applicable to a person rather than to the type of thing. At that time, there were no currencies in which debts could be paid, so the way to satisfy a debt might be to seize a particular thing that belonged to someone else. The earliest recorded case involving a sale of a ship concerned the debt of the shipmaster, and this led to the issue of a warrant for the arrest of the ship. An action in rem followed the arrest and the ship was later sold by the court in order that the debt might be satisfied by the shipmaster. So, a procedure was developed in admiralty under which a creditor might satisfy his debt. This involved the arrest of the debtor’s vessel and a sale of the vessel if the debt were proved. If we skip back to the late 13th century, around the time that the word “Admiral” was first seen in the records and the time that a unification of the laws of the sea was beginning to come about, we might find the case to be the genesis of the court’s jurisdiction. This case led to the issue of an arrest warrant and the above procedure, and it was the first case in which the court’s business might be compared to modern-day civil litigation, which is actually not far removed from the process in rem in admiralty today.
2.1 Early Origins
2.1 Early Origins
By the mid-sixteenth century, considerable hostility existed between the common law Courts which were applying the law of the sea and the High Court of Admiralty. This hostility was based on jurisdictional disputes often involving imprisonment of one party’s legal practitioners by the other. The common law courts viewed the High Court of Admiralty as a rival which encroached on its jurisdiction and was in direct contravention of the customary duality of jurisdiction of the English legal system. This led to a case in the early seventeenth century where the legality of the High Court of Admiralty was considered. Although it was found that the High Court of Admiralty was a Court whose existence in dealing with maritime causes was both legal and justified, the common law Courts continued to resolve the jurisdictional dispute in their favour through the Contempt of Court Acts and the Judicature Acts. These changed the High Court of Admiralty’s jurisdiction from one of applying a separate body of law to that of enforcing the common law and finally merged its jurisdiction into that of the Crown’s, effectively ending the existence of a separate admiralty jurisdiction in England until its revival in 1971.
These matters were adjudicated in the Lord High Admiral’s Court, which was established around 1360 and exercised delegated jurisdiction from the King. The Lord High Admiral’s Court displayed marked similarities with the English King’s Court, thus the two Court systems were often in competition. The High Court of Admiralty was established between 1483 and 1485. It was a Court based on the civilian Roman law and it operated in London and certain appointed locations throughout England. This new Court was to deal exclusively with maritime causes and as its Judges were derived from the Doctors of Law and the law of nations, it had much in common with the Lord High Admiral’s Court. The new Court had maritime law and the legal profession’s interests at heart, thus the Judges of both the King’s Court and the Lord High Admiral’s Court saw this as a threat to their jurisdiction.
2.2 Establishment of Admiralty Courts in the UK
The need for a separate system of civil law and courts for maritime cases was generated from the increasing amount of claims that were taken to common law courts. The usual practice had been to arrest the ship or sometimes even the cargo and can usually be traced to an incident where cargoes belonging to the Monarch were arrested in payment of offsetting old debts. In 1360, a formal petition was presented to the King showing that certain cases, civil cases of water should be tried in a different court to common pleas. From this, the first recorded instance we have of appointing a deputy or judge for maritime cases and those of the instance is an entry from 1363 in the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer.
The referred appointment of someone in the port of Southampton to hear and determine diverse business of the admiral now committed to certain faithful merchants of that city before the king’s admiral or his lieutenant to the great damage of the said admiral and against the form of the statutes. This shows that the admiralty was developing its own system of law and seeking to protect it from the king’s courts or other agencies of the state. This led to the marking out of what thing the law lord as the sphere of the admiralty and creation of jurisdiction in the modern sense.
2.3 Evolution of Jurisdiction
The Admiralty court comes across as a body of law that has continued its development from ancient times. The essence of the court is to provide an effective singular forum for the resolution of maritime disputes, and it is this unbroken development through to modern times despite the various changes through British legal history that provides the mistake as to the court’s historical role. This can be seen through a detailed analysis of the evolution of Admiralty jurisdiction over time. As previously mentioned, the High Court in 1873 took over the old instance courts including that of the High Court of Admiralty. The significance of this at the time was that it was thought that all old procedural rules of the courts were to continue in application unless differently legislated, thus the Judicature Acts did not affect the Admiralty jurisdiction. However, the current state of the Admiralty jurisdiction can be said to be found in the Supreme Court Act of 1981 which applied much-needed reform to the procedure and practice of the old courts.
This was the birth of what is now known as the High Court Admiralty Jurisdiction. The significance for this change has brought the jurisdiction into line with that of the general civil jurisdiction of the High Court SCM Timber v Eastwell [1981]. This means that in most cases there is now no substantive difference between the procedural rules applied to Admiralty cases and that of civil cases. Note that any rules that only affect the Admiralty procedure are still found in the Supreme Court Act 1981.
3. Historical Significance of Admiralty Courts
The historical evidence of the many functions of the British Admiralty courts is important to the debate as to whether the Court Martial could or should have jurisdiction to try civilians. In the early years, admiralty jurisdiction followed the fleet so that its dealings with criminal matters involving non-naval persons were sporadic and incidental; but there was an early instance of an admiralty court meeting on land to try offenses committed by English merchants at Stade in 1417. The traditional view that the court concerned itself only with naval and maritime matters until the 19th century is not easy to reconcile with the fourteenth-century ordinance cited above, nor with the admission of civilian litigants in the vice-admiralty courts from the mid-sixteenth century onwards.
Probably the ordinance reflects the intention to set up a single comprehensive system of maritime justice for England and her possessions abroad; in 1357 it was repeated before an admiral set out for Aquitaine that he should not hold his court in the territory apud barbaros nec alibi[7] and the Black Book of the Admiralty repeatedly asserts the exclusivity of the admiral’s jurisdiction in maritime causes between parties of whom both were the king’s subjects. From an early date, the civilian and canonist doctors of the civil law took a close interest in the practice of the admiral’s courts which reported a high and varied quality of jurisprudence.
The scope of English maritime law was widened by the fact that from the late fifteenth century the king’s subjects resident in the Channel Islands, and later in Berwick and Wales were deemed to be aliens for purposes of jurisdiction. Between 1701 and 1855, the Jersey court had jurisdiction in prize of war cases between subjects and islanders and also between islanders and foreigners. English prize and prize law have been declared by the judgments of English common law courts to have been the law of the whole British dominions – an early example of which may have been decided in the court of journal of Drake’s voyage to the Americas in 1572 at which the judge Sir Gilbert Talbot declared a haul of Indian treasure no part of personal prize of the Spaniards who took it but the conquest of sovereign people and therefore the queen’s by the right of discovery – The Southern Cross.
By a succession of acts of 1696, 1701, 1702, and 1703 and 3 Geo 3 c 39, the prize jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty was confirmed and its pre-existing jurisdiction over maritime causes was consolidated. From the 12th century onwards, the city-state of London had enjoyed a large measure of local autonomy and a special system of pleading recorded in documents known as letters patent. As the center of English and later British maritime commerce, it was to be the venue of an unreported case in prize between two foreign vessels before the lord High Admiral in 1477 and the foremost impleader of later admiralty causes. In the light of London’s special system, the Admiralty was permitted by the Mayor and Aldermen to try cases at Delegates Hall from 5th February 1704 Old Style and at some date prior to 1712 an admiralty sessions bar was granted within the city. In the following year, the Eighteenth Century Act of repealing 13 Geo. 2 c 3 declared the law and proceedings in Delegates Hall to be erroneous and lascivious and an attack was made in 1752 on a special admiralty prize jurisdiction in the case of an alien enemy ship The. King of Prussia but after losing a verdict in the Common Pleas obtained a writ of prohibition from the House of Lords. Admiralty trials have fallen into abeyance after several judgments of which the last hхранение и орущение животных in 1859 entered frustration for a want of time; and it would seem that the case erred by being heard on a mutable injunction in the High Court of Admiralty itself which remains the principal forum for English maritime causes.
3.1 Influence on Maritime Law
The law of the sea and maritime law are two aspects of jurisprudence which in essence carried over to the new territories and were given impetus by the founding of colonial admiralty courts. These court structures adopted have continued to shape both American and Canadian maritime law which can be evidenced through the similarities found in the respective bodies of law to this day. For example, the majority of procedural and substantive aspects of Canadian maritime law are based in tradition to the point that provincial courts maintain concurrent jurisdiction, hearing ship cases in rem where the res is found in inland waters. Similarly, the United States still gives district courts original jurisdiction in admiralty and maritime cases pursuant to Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Jurisdiction is a key element of these laws and is centered on the theory that maritime law represents a union of laws for supranational society and therefore is to be applied similarly throughout various jurisdictions. This concept was actually voiced in the 1950s by academics and practicing maritime lawyers in the development of the still younger lex mercatoria and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Both of these areas seek to bring harmony and effective governance to maritime law and its application across the world.
3.2 Role in Naval Expansion
Increased naval and military presence in India was mirrored by a significant increase in Admiralty cases involving the East India Company. This trend continued until the mid-19th century, the EIC’s heyday in both leadership of the subcontinent and in martial activity. France and Spain were the dominant forces in Europe and their rivalries with England can be seen as an impetus for increased regulation and codification of maritime and prize law, as English courts looked to create legal advantage for English vessels in the event of war with a foreign state. In 1912, an international agreement was made between the major colonial powers to unify prize laws. The outbreak of the First and Second World Wars led to increased importance of the conduct and interpretation of international law between military and enemy occupation of enemy or former enemy territory, reflected in a number of important cases in both world wars pertaining to the establishment and exercise of martial authority over territory and martial and emergency legislation affecting private individual and corporate rights.
An early duty of the Admiralty was to cover “and amitie”; this gradually developed into formal shipping agreements and then into policies for creating the conditions for shipment to occur. While the genesis of naval expansion is also the topic of some debate among historians, a strong case can be made that naval power and the navies which were constructed were a means to an end of securing economic status vis-a-vis the acquisition of colonies and control of trade routes, and that Admiralty courts played an essential role in the process. While an increase in shipping and navigational activity demands an increase in the volume of incidents at sea featuring some sort of breach in maritime law, an initial impetus for the crown and Parliament (according to the judiciary outlined in the 1965 Moloney report) to create permanent Admiralty courts and greatly increase their jurisdiction was to use them as a tool for expanding the Royal Navy. This action was first taken by Henry VIII who created a new Admiralty court separate from the common law courts. Henry’s motivation was to decrease the king’s reliance on privateering and limit what he saw as piracy by foreign vessels on English ships, as these were seen as threats to England’s vast and increasing wealth which was becoming dependent on colonial ventures and trade with the Mediterranean states.
3.3 Impact on International Trade
A system of courts that today has worldwide jurisdiction in cases dealing with maritime law began to develop with the establishment of the High Court of Admiralty. The Lord High Admiral exercised both judicial and executive powers through the various admirals and officers. When there was no appropriate common law remedy to a point of law or state of fact, the decision of the Court of Admiralty would be used to provide in personam relief in cases that the common law courts at the time would not entertain. Although the jurisdiction of the common law courts to issue prohibitions was confirmed by parliament in 1536, the position regarding the relationship between the common law and admiralty courts would be declared settled in the seminal case of Dunlop v Waugh in 1799. This decision established the Admiralty as an independent equitable jurisdiction in England and Wales. It was held that the only ports and havens in England to which the admiralty’s jurisdiction extended were those declared by statute, and the admiralty was confined to acting within the lines so drawn. This was a major moment in the history of the English judiciary, which led to the cessation of the Admiralty’s continental-like posture as a roving court and established England as having admiralty courts that followed the civil law. In the eighteenth century, however, the Admiralty committed much of its business to vice-admiralty courts, and this practice would go on to be a cause for revolution in one of England’s colonies. The impact of the decisions becomes apparent: “Judgments and awards given in prize cases in the Vice-Admiralty Court established the right of American privateers to sell their prizes in the ports of the West Indies and the right of neutrals and in some cases of belligerents. Complete immunity of neutral trade in enemy’s goods from capture by the operation of judgments in prize cases has become possible only in the nineteenth century.” This is because the American Revolution demonstrated the quest of the American colonists for a greater degree of self-government, and the global significance of maritime law was bolstered by decisions made in the Caribbean courts. Given that the twentieth century has seen two major world wars, the significance of events in the Caribbean courts and the impact of decisions of the time serve as a sobering reflection of an age of conflict.
3.4 Contribution to Legal Precedents
This is an important question which will be looked at in order to gauge the weight of the impact of the courts on the development of English law. Despite the dearth of evidence, the Admiralty Courts did contribute significantly to the development of legal principles and procedures. This evidence is provided in a number of royal proclamations and statutes which exhibit the lasting influence of the special civil law method of the Admiralty Court. A proclamation of King John in 1206 that ships and seafaring men should be protected when they transport of in the King’s service is an early example of the influential protection of mariners and ships which is known as “the policies of the sea” where it was decided that a body of specialists should be given jurisdiction to combat the delay and corruption of the common law. This was echoed in 1108 and 1613 where it was decided a greater body of specialists would decide on the policies of the sea. Also a statute of 1285 King Edward I provided for a method of execution specially adapted to the procedure in the Admiralty Courts for the prosecutions of homicide on the high seas. The significance was these legal measures and many others were integrated into English law which was an affirmation of the policies and methods of the Admiralty Court.
The Admiralty Court also made substantial contributions to the development of law proper. The work of Sir Edward Coke in the early 17th century to unify the common and civil laws is well known. In 1609 he was appointed to the office of the Admiralty and began to reform it as he had reformed the common law. He compiled a manual of the practice of the Admiralty Court and wrote “whatever relates to the Admiralty doth also belong to the common law for that it is a branch thereof” (paraphrased). It is thus that many instances of procedure and principles of the common law have been borrowed from the civil law using the Admiralty Court as a vehicle and Sir Henry Maine wrote that the fusion started with the Admiralty Court. Also Lord Mansfield’s work in the deeper integration of commercial and admiralty law in the mid 18th century is described as having affected a capture of the common law by the law of merchants, a process which took place in the Admiralty Courts and became well known in certain cases in the House of Lords where it was agreed that decisions made in the Admiralty Court did indeed bind in common law.
4. Conclusion
The Admiralty Court of the 14th and 15th century dealt with cases based on conscience using the principles of international law and also the Lex Mercatoria, which was common to all nations. This was equitable in the sense that it was not bound by local custom or statute, and the attempt to create a universal system of law was parallel to that of the Chancery Court in this period. The fusion of common law and equity within the Chancery was complete by 1615, and the Judicature Act of 1873-1875 fused the principles of common law and equity into one system. The Indian Grace No2 1998 also provides an example of how ancient customs of the sea upheld by the Admiralty Courts are being used to fill the interstices of statute and common law today, which is also a function of equity.
The historical evolution of the Admiralty Courts has contributed to various aspects of the judiciary today. For instance, the chronological events and causes of change can be used to make a general comparison with that of the doctrine of constitutional law, wherein the courts have had to uphold the same ends to meet the needs of a changing society. It can be argued that the most significant contribution of the Admiralty Courts to the judiciary today is the development of equity.
The courts have also maintained their original function of upholding the rights of the seafarer by providing a fair and just trial. The case of the Indian Grace No2 1998 brought the issue of seamen being treated as second-class citizens to light, and it was held that seamen should be treated the same as any other employee.
At present, the courts apply the principles of international law and also domestic law, while in the medieval period, the courts were at a stage in which they were formulating and trying to establish their own body of law. This often led to conflict, which would today be considered a breach of the separation of powers, as courts would exercise legislative and executive functions. The issue of separation of power in the courts was addressed in the case of Saniga 1980, wherein it was held that courts could only apply law and not make it. This is an important factor in the judiciary today within the UK.
The constitution of the Admiralty Court has evolved considerably over the past ten centuries. The court’s powers and its jurisdiction have altered at various stages of time. However, the main purpose of the Admiralty Court has remained the same, which is to provide an expeditious trial of cases at sea. The hierarchical system present in the courts today allows for cases at sea to be dealt with in accordance with their significance, thus ensuring that more substantial cases are dealt with greater care and attention compared to smaller ones. This method has been adopted from the Courts of the Lord High Admiral and the Judges Delegates in the eighteenth century, which also operated on a hierarchical system.