Tides and Tribulations: English Prize Law and the Law of Nations in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

By the 17th century, the English legal landscape was looking like a battlefield, characterised by the ongoing antagonism and rivalry between the common law courts and the civilian Court of Admiralty. Judges of both English court systems vied with one another to gain the right to deal with litigation involving traders, merchants and seamen. And it seemed at a certain point that the common lawyers had, in fact, won. But there was one aspect of the Admiralty Court that displayed a very international character and which would not succumb to the dominance of the common law: prize. This paper will explain the development of English prize law, giving insight into why it was important to retain an internationally-based legal authority similar to that of its European counterparts, as per the Law of Nations. Despite the commonality of laws between England and that of other nations as far as prize was concerned, a uniformity of practice was also not necessarily guaranteed and the intertwinement of the law of nations language on the one hand and pragmatic and political considerations on the other will, too, be a focal point of this article.