This Article (1) delineates different kinds of allocative costs that marine-peril contingencies can generate and different kinds of marine-peril-related decisions that can generate allocative inefficiency (marine-salvage-operation investment decisions; decisions about whether to offer to attempt or to actually attempt marine rescues; decisions about character of marine-rescue attempts that are made; decisions by potential rescuees to accept or reject offers of marine-rescue attempts; and decisions by potential rescuees to make or reject various marine-peril-avoidance moves); (2) defines formal meaning of the most-allocatively-efficient response a State can make to marine-peril contingencies; (3) explains why, standing alone, judge-prescribed marine-rescuee-to-rescuer-compensation awards cannot minimize allocative cost that marine peril generates (the misallocation that marine-peril-related decisions generate); (4) discusses interdependence of various types of marine-peril-related decisions that can be made; (5) defines second-best-allocatively-efficient and third-best-allocatively-efficient approach to deciding particular issues and second-best-allocatively-efficient and third-best-allocatively-efficient resolution of a particular issue; (6) executes a partial and preliminary second-best analysis of factors that determine impact of any marine-salvage-award formula both on each of types of marine-peril-related misallocation such awards can affect and on total amount of marine-peril-related misallocation that use of any given marine-salvage-award formula will generate; (7) speculates on differences between marine-salvor-compensation formula that second-best-allocatively-efficient and formula that third-best-allocatively-efficient; (8) provides an account of protocol courts allegedly use to determine compensation they order defendant marine rescuees to pay plaintiff marine rescuers who have not been able to negotiate a binding price for their services; (9) analyzes second-best and third-best allocative efficiency of that protocol - i.e., delineates respects in which that protocol definitely not second-best-allocatively-efficient and explains why it extraordinarily unlikely to be third-best-allocatively-efficient; (10) points out that preceding analysis refutes Landes and Posner's claim that of marine salvage is consistent and displays impressive congruence their hypothesis that the rules of are best explained as efforts - however unwitting - to bring about (economically-)efficient results; (11) delineates structural deficiencies of type of argument with which Landes and Posner attempt to establish their conclusion that marine-salvage allocatively efficient; (12) asserts that Law & Economics scholars who believe that in general allocatively efficient almost always attempt to justify this conclusion with same type of argument that Landes and Posner made about marine-salvage law; and (13) explains why it important not only to refute conclusion that judge-made law allocatively efficient but to demonstrate inadequacy of type of argument with which scholars who believe that judge-made law allocative efficient attempt to bolster this position.