THE GREEN BAG granted; hence cases of that description are far less numerous now than they were prior to 1891. Justice Brown, however, has had frequent opportunities to write opinions on what is undoubtedly his favorite subject. Many of them are of great interest involving the extent of the jurisdiction of the Federal courts under the clause of the Constitu tion giving them jurisdiction in cases of admiralty and maritime law. He has al ways been in favor of a wide construction of the jurisdiction of the court, and in one of his recent opinions, the Robert W. Parsons, 191 U. S. 17, he expressed for the court the rule that admiralty has exclusive jurisdiction of the enforcement of a statutory lien in rein for repairs made in the home port of a canal boat, engaged wholly in traffic on the Erie Canal and the Hudson River; and that although that canal is wholly within the state of New York, as it affects navigable waters and is a great highway of commerce between ports in different states and foreign countries, it is a navigable water of the United States within the legitimate scope of the admiralty juris diction of the courts of the United States. This decision of the court was not reached unanimously, and, as it has been expressed, "the admiral's flag was hoisted on the Erie Canal " only in the face of a vigorous dis sent from Mr. Justice Brewer in which the chief justice and Justice Peckham con curred, Mr. Justice Harlan also separately dissenting. In the Plymouth, 3 Wall 20, il was held that where damage was done wholly upon land, the fact that the damage originated on water subject to the admiralty jurisdiction did not make the case one for the ad miralty, and the court declined to take jurisdiction of a cause in which it appeared that a vessel lying at a wharf took fire, and the fire spreading to certain warehouses on the wharf, consumed them and their con tents. Relying on that opinion, delivered in
1865 by Justice Kelson, the District Court in Alabama dismissed a libel in rein against a vessel for damages caused by negligently running into a channel beacon attached to the bottom of a river within the admiralty jurisdiction. The case came to the Supreme Court —-the Blackhcath, 195 U. S. 361 — and the decision was reversed. Justice Holmes writing the opinion, to the effect that the rule announced in the Plymouth did not apply, as. in that case there was nothing maritime in the nature of the tort for which the vessel was attached, but that in this case admiralty could under the cir cumstances take jurisdiction without tran scending the limitations of the Constitution or encountering the Plymouth or any other authority binding on the court. Mr. Justice Brown did not actually dis sent, but separately concurred in what amounted to a dissenting opinion, and ex pressed as his view that the conclusion of the court was only reached by practically overruling the case of the Plymouth. He, however, believed that admiralty should have jurisdiction and accepted the Blackheath- not only as overruling the Plvmouth but the cases of the Phoenix Insurance Com pany, 118 U. S. 610 and the Chicago & Pacific Elevator Company, 119 U. S. 388, and also as recognizing the principle adopted by the English Admiralty Court Jurisdiction Act of 186 1 extending the admiralty jurisdiction to any claim for damages by any ship. It will be impossible in the brief space allotted for this review of Justice Brown's work in the Supreme Court of the United States, to refer to more than a few of the several hundred opinions which he has de livered during the sixteen years that he has sat upon that Bench and gradually pro gressed from the extreme left of the Bench to the seat next but one on the right of the chief justice. Of his opinions, some of which will be found in every volume of the reports from No. 137 to No. 202 the last volume of the current term, only a few can be selected.
