Admiralty was once the foundation of our legal and economic survival. In recent years, however, it has come to be viewed as an anachronistic backwater of the law. Unfortunately, this perception belies the reality: admiralty law is as vitally important as ever, not just to the commerce that it supports but in the realities it illuminates about the federal courts and our constitutional structure.

This Article looks at the case study of historic treasure shipwrecks to show how our legal system has strayed increasingly far from the core principles of admiralty that the founders enshrined in Article III of the Constitution. This has troubling implications, not just for treasure hunters salvaging historic wrecks who must now navigate an inconsistent and unconstitutional legal landscape, but for federal courts scholarship, which has persisted in drawing wide-sweeping conclusions that overlook admiralty’s role in Article III courts. 

This Article thus makes two major contributions: first, it highlights the degree to which federal courts scholarship has ignored admiralty. The majority viewpoint on jurisdiction stripping, for instance, currently holds that Congress has plenary power to remove jurisdiction from the federal courts. Engaging with admiralty precedent immediately demonstrates that this conclusion is incorrect.

Second, it shows how, in recent decades, the neglect of admiralty has led to Congressional action that violates the mandatory federal jurisdiction over admiralty and maritime cases articulated by Article III. It describes how two laws, the Abandoned Shipwreck Act and the Sunken Military Craft Act, unconstitutionally remove traditional maritime causes of action from federal courts. While such a removal may be permissible in other areas of federal jurisdiction, this Article draws extensively on admiralty and federal courts theory and precedent to show that such a removal violates Article III in the realm of admiralty and maritime cases. It is time for academics, judges, and Congress to reaffirm the foundational principles of admiralty law, do justice to Article III, and bring current practice into line with historical context.