Overview

The Nation at Sea tells a new story about the federal judiciary, and about the early United States itself. Most accounts of the nation's transformation from infant republic to world power ignore the courts. Their importance, if any, was limited to domestic politics. But the truth is that, in the critical decades following the Constitution's ratification, federal judges decided thousands of maritime cases that profoundly shaped the United States' relations with foreign nations. Judges ruled on the legality of naval captures made by European powers, regulated the conduct of American merchants, and tried pirates and slave traders who sought profit amid the turmoil of transatlantic war. Kevin Arlyck's vivid reconstruction of this forgotten history reveals how, over time, the federal courts helped realize an increasingly bold conception of American sovereignty, one that vindicated the Declaration of Independence's claim to the United States' place 'among the powers of the earth.'

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9781009393065

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Reviews

'In The Nation at Sea, Kevin Arlyck expertly bridges two significant but often detached areas of scholarship: the early history of the federal courts, a topic typically treated as 'domestic,' and the international struggles of the United States in the early national period. The intersection of these topics is of pressing interest to lawyers, judges, legal scholars, and historians, especially given the current prominence of originalist methods of legal interpretation.' Alison LaCroix, Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School and author of The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms 'In the first 40 years after the Constitution was ratified, much of the business of the federal courts consisted of maritime disputes with international dimensions. These disputes made judges central to U.S. foreign relations in ways that are scarcely imaginable today. Arlyck's compelling and important study is the first major treatment of how federal judges took up this international role and with what consequences.' Nicholas R. Parrillo, Townsend Professor of Law, Yale Law School and author of Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780–1940 'A Nation at Sea argues persuasively that America's high courts negotiated international conflicts at a crucial period after the founding when the United States needed to establish credibility and assert neutrality in the midst of dangerous conflicts between powerful empires. Arlyck also demonstrates that Supreme Court justices failed to uphold American restrictions on the slave trade after 1808, even though they could have done so through extension of legal doctrines of their own maritime decisions.' Holly Brewer, Burke Chair of American Cultural and Intellectual History, University of Maryland and author of By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority

Author Information

Kevin Arlyck is Professor of Law at Georgetown University. He is an expert on the history of the federal courts and the early federal government.

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