reign governments. The Court held
that it includes only persons accredited to the United States by foreign
governments.[327] However, matters of especial delicacy such as suits
against ambassadors and public ministers or their servants, where the
law of nations permits such suits, and in all controversies of a civil
nature to which a State is a party,[328] Congress has made the original
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court exclusive of that of other courts. By
its compliance with the Congressional distribution of exclusive and
concurrent original jurisdiction, the Court has tacitly sanctioned the
power of Congress to make such jurisdiction exclusive or concurrent as
it may choose. Likewise, as in the Popovici case, it has implied that
Congress, if it chose, could make the court's jurisdiction of consular
officials exclusive of State Courts.

Cases of Admiralty and Maritime Jurisdiction

ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS

The admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the federal courts had its
origin in the jurisdiction vested in the courts of the Admiral of the
English Navy. Prior to independence, vice-admiralty courts were created
in the Colonies by commissions from the English High Court of Admiralty.
After independence, the States established admiralty courts, from which
at a later date appeals could be taken to a court of appeals set up by
Congress under the Articles of Confederation.[329] Since one of the
objectives of the Philadelphia Convention was the promotion of commerce
and the removal of obstacles to it, it was only logical that the
Constitution should deprive the States of all admiralty jurisdiction and
vest it exclusively in the federal courts.

CONGRESSIONAL INTERPRETATION OF THE ADMIRALTY CLAUSE

The Constitution uses the terms "admiralty and maritime jurisdiction"
without defining them. Though closely related the words are not
synonyms. In England the word "maritime" referred to the cases arising
upon the high seas, whereas "admiralty" meant primarily cases of a
local nature involving police regulations of shipping, harbors, fishing,
and the like. A long struggle between the admiralty and common law
courts had, however, in the course of time resulted in a considerable
curtailment of English admiralty jurisdiction. For this and other
reasons, a much broader conception of admiralty and maritime
jurisdiction existed in the United States at the time of the framing of
the Constitution than in the Mother Countr