|
Prize is a term used in admiralty law to refer to equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and its cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, it would be made the subject of a prize case, an ''in rem'' proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which it was to be disposed of. ==History and sources of prize law== In his book ''The Prize Game'', Donald Petrie writes, "at the outset, prize taking was all smash and grab, like breaking a jeweler's window, but by the fifteenth century a body of guiding rules, the maritime law of nations, had begun to evolve and achieve international recognition."〔Petrie, ''The Prize Game'' p. 4–5 (on the evolving prize rules in international law).〕 Grotius's seminal treatise on international law published in 1604 called ''De Iure Praedae Commentarius (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty)'' (of which Chapter 12, "''Mare Liberum''" inter alia founded the doctrine of freedom of the seas) was an advocate's brief justifying Dutch seizures of Spanish and Portuguese shipping.〔Grotius, ''De Iure Praedae Commentarius'' (''Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty'') p. ix (introductory notes describing Grotius's purpose).〕 Grotius defends the practice of taking prizes as not merely traditional or customary but just: his ''Commentary'' points out that the etymology of the name of the Greek war god Ares was the verb "to seize" and that the law of nations had deemed looting enemy property legal since the beginning of Western recorded history in Homeric times.〔Grotius, ''De Iure Praedae Commentarius'' (''Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty'') p. 43 (considering property seizure as a species of warfare).〕 Prize law fully developed between the Seven Years' War of 1756–63 and the American Civil War of 1861–65. This period largely coincides with the last century of fighting sail and includes the Napoleonic Wars, the American and French Revolutions, and America's Quasi-War with France of the late 1790s.〔Petrie, ''The Prize Game'' p. 5〕 Much of Anglo-American prize law derives from 18th Century British precedents in particular a compilation called the ''1753 Report of the Law Officers'' authored by William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705–93) said to be the most important exposition of prize law published in English, along with the subsequent High Court of Admiralty decisions of William Scott, Lord Stowell (1743–1836). American Justice Joseph Story, the leading United States judicial authority on prize law, drew heavily on the 1753 report and Lord Stowell's decisions, as did Francis Upton, who wrote the last major American treatise on prize law, his ''Maritime Warfare and Prize''.〔Petrie, ''The Prize Game'' p. 7〕 While the Anglo-American common law case precedents are the most accessible description of Prize Law, it is important to bear in mind that in prize cases courts construe and apply international customs and usages, the Law of Nations, and not the laws or precedents of any one country.〔''The Elsebe'' in Colombos, ''A Treatise on the Law of Prize'' p. 21 (Lord Stowell noting that prize law is matter of international law, not the law of any one nation.)〕 Fortunes in prize money were to be made at sea as vividly depicted in the novels of C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian. During the American Revolution the combined American naval and privateering prizes totaled nearly $24 million;〔( While the calculation is complex and inexact ), adjusted for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index $24 million in the dollars of 1800 computes to approximately $450 million today.〕 in the War of 1812, $45 million.〔Maclay, ''A History of American Privateers'', Preface p. ix (totaling captured vessels and prize proceeds).〕 Such huge revenues were earned when $200 were a generous year's wages for a sailor;〔A ''History of American Privateers'' p.10–11 (comparing prize awards with pay officers and crew)〕 his share of a single prize could fetch ten or twenty times his yearly pay, and taking five or six prizes in one voyage was common. With so much at stake prize law attracted some of the greatest legal talent of the age, including John Adams, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. author of ''Two Years Before the Mast''. Prize cases were among the most complex of the time, as the disposition of vast sums turned on the fluid Law of Nations, and difficult questions of jurisdiction and precedent. One of the earliest U.S. cases for instance, that of the ''Active'', took fully 30 years to resolve "who's in charge?" jurisdictional disputes between state and federal authorities. A captured American privateer captain, 20-year-old Gideon Olmsted, shipped aboard the British sloop ''Active'' in Jamaica as an ordinary hand in an effort to get home. Olmsted organized a mutiny, commandeered the sloop, but on its way to America a Pennsylvania privateer took the ''Active''.〔''The Journal of Gideon Olmsted'' Forward pp. vii to xv (discussing Olmsted's harrowing adventures at sea, followed by a 30 year ordeal in the courts on land).〕 Olmsted and the privateer disputed ownership of the prize, and in November 1778 a Philadelphia prize court jury came to a split verdict awarding each a share. Olmsted with the assistance of then American General Benedict Arnold appealed to the Continental Congress Prize Committee, which reversed the Philadelphia jury verdict and awarded the whole prize to Olmsted. But Pennsylvania authorities refused to enforce the decision, asserting the Continental Congress could not intrude on a state prize court jury verdict. Olmsted doggedly pursued the case for decades until he won, in a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1809 which Justice Stanley Matthews later called "the first case in which the supremacy of the Constitution was enforced by judicial tribunals against the assertion of state authority."〔J.C. Bancroft Davis, ''United States Reports, Cases Adjudged in the October Term, 1888'', vol. 131 (New York: Banks & Brothers 1889) app., p. xxxiv n. (quoting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley Matthews on the significance of the ''Active'' case) see also ''Prize Cases Decided in the United States Supreme Court'', Introduction at 5-6 (discussing the ''Active'').〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Prize (law)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|