Maggie Gardner
91 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1585
From the earliest days of the republic, the broad scope of admiralty jurisdiction brought foreign parties and foreign disputes into federal courts. In order to support the system of maritime commerce, federal judges sitting in admiralty could and did hear disputes with no U.S. parties that arose in international or foreign waters. To determine when intervention in foreign disputes was helpful or hurtful, admiralty courts developed a range of special procedural tools. Over the course of the twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court migrated some of these special admiralty procedures to civil litigation more generally. This Essay traces the migration and evolution of three such procedures: forum non conveniens, the enforcement of forum selection clauses, and the modern presumption against extraterritoriality. Recognizing the admiralty roots of these doctrines in turn serves to demythologize them. They are neither as timeless nor as settled as Supreme Court decisions have suggested, and they represent a greater incursion on the legislative powers of Congress and the states than the Supreme Court has acknowledged.
