Court Opinion

ID: 9422179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:33.304931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:34.717174
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins,
dissenting.
Certainly no decision in the Court’s history has been the progenitor of more lasting dissatisfaction and disharmony within a particular area of the law than Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205. The mischief it has caused was due to the uncritical application of the loose doctrine of observing "the very uniformity *743in respect to maritime matters which the Constitution was designed to establish.” Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, supra, at 217. The looser a legal doctrine, like that of the duty to observe “the uniformity of maritime law,” the more incumbent it is upon the judiciary to apply it with well-defined concreteness. It can fairly be said that the Jensen decision has not been treated as a favored doctrine. Quite the contrary. It has been steadily narrowed in application, as is strikingly illustrated by such a tour de force as our decision in Davis v. Department of Labor, 317 U. S. 249.
The Court today, relying as it does on Jensen, reinvigorates that “ill-starred decision.” Davis v. Department of Labor, supra, at 259 (concurring opinion). The notion that if such a limited and essentially local transaction as the contract here in issue were allowed to be governed by a local statute of frauds it would “disturb the uniformity of maritime law” is, I respectfully submit, too abstract and doctrinaire a view of the true demands of maritime law. I would affirm the judgment below.