was
designed to establish" or to hamper and impede freedom of navigation
between the States and with foreign countries. Nor could the act be
covered by the saving clause of the act of 1789 governing common law
remedies, since the remedy provided by the compensation statute was
unknown to the common law.[387]

Following the Jensen decision Congress enacted a statute saving to
claimants their rights and remedies under State workmen's compensation
laws.[388] In Knickerbocker Ice Co. _v._ Stewart[389] the same majority
of judges, with Justice McReynolds again their spokesman, invalidated
this statute as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to
the States. The holding was based on the premise, stated as follows:
"The Constitution itself adopted and established, as part of the laws of
the United States, approved rules of the general maritime law and
empowered Congress to legislate in respect of them and other matters
within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. Moreover, it took from
the States all power, by legislation or judicial decision, to contravene
the essential purposes of, or to work material injury to, characteristic
features of such law or to interfere with its proper harmony and
uniformity in its international and interstate relations."[390] And a
like fate overtook the attempt of Congress in 1922 to protect
longshoremen and other workers under State compensation laws by
excluding masters and crew members of vessels from those who might claim
compensation for maritime injuries.[391] Finally, in 1927 Congress
passed the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Act,[392] which provided
accident compensation for those workers who could not validly be
compensated under State statutes. This time it seems to have succeeded,
the constitutionality of the 1927 statute being apparently taken for
granted.[393]

The net result of the Jensen Case and its progeny has been a series of
cases which hold that in some circumstances the States can apply their
compensation laws to maritime employees and in other circumstances
cannot, if to do so "works material prejudice to the characteristic
features of the general maritime law or interferes with the proper
harmony and uniformity of that law in its international and interstate
relations."[394] But, as Justice Black pointed out in 1942 in Davis _v._
Department of Labor,[395] "when a State could, and when it could not,
grant protection under a compensation act was left as