Description: 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.'
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes: '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