Legal Question in Admiralty Law in Wisconsin

Prize Case Questions

Art. 3 of the Constitition does not mention Prize cases, however they arise out of admiralty jurisdiction. They involve ships captured as part of a blockade.

From Annotation to Constitution. You can read the cases by going to www.findlaw.com Search the Const. data base and enter the search term "prize"The Prize Cases.--The basis for a broader conception was laid in certain early acts of Congress authorizing the President to employ military force in the execution of the laws.110 In his famous message to Congress of July 4, 1861,111 Lincoln advanced the claim that the ''war power'' was his for the purpose of suppressing rebellion, and in the Prize Cases112 of 1863 a divided Court sustained this theory. The immediate issue was the validity of the blockade which the President, following the attack on Fort Sumter, had proclaimed of the Southern ports.113 The argument was advanced that a blockade to be valid must be an incident of a ''public war'' validly declared, and that only Congress could, by virtue of its power ''to declare war,'' constitutionally impart to a military situa tion this character and scope. Speaking for the majority of the Court, Justice Grier answered: ''If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special legislative authority. And whether the hostile party be a foreign invader, or States organized in rebellion, it is none the less a war, although the declaration of it be 'unilateral.' Lord Stowell (1 Dodson, 247) observes, 'It is not the less a war on that account, for war may exist without a declaration on either side. It is so laid down by the best writers of the law of nations. A declaration of war by one country only is not a mere challenge to be accepted or refused at pleasure by the other.'