The Nation at Sea
The Federal Courts and American Sovereignty, 1789–1825

The Nation at Sea reveals how the federal courts made the Constitution's promise of American independence into a reality.

Kevin Arlyck (Author)

9781009393065, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 September 2025

420 pages
23.5 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.77 kg

'A Nation at Sea argues persuasively that America's high courts negotiated international conflicts at a crucial period after the founding when the United States needed to establish credibility and assert neutrality in the midst of dangerous conflicts between powerful empires. Arlyck also demonstrates that Supreme Court justices failed to uphold American restrictions on the slave trade after 1808, even though they could have done so through extension of legal doctrines of their own maritime decisions.' Holly Brewer, Burke Chair of American Cultural and Intellectual History, University of Maryland and author of By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority

The Nation at Sea tells a new story about the federal judiciary, and about the early United States itself. Most accounts of the nation's transformation from infant republic to world power ignore the courts. Their importance, if any, was limited to domestic politics. But the truth is that, in the critical decades following the Constitution's ratification, federal judges decided thousands of maritime cases that profoundly shaped the United States' relations with foreign nations. Judges ruled on the legality of naval captures made by European powers, regulated the conduct of American merchants, and tried pirates and slave traders who sought profit amid the turmoil of transatlantic war. Kevin Arlyck's vivid reconstruction of this forgotten history reveals how, over time, the federal courts helped realize an increasingly bold conception of American sovereignty, one that vindicated the Declaration of Independence's claim to the United States' place 'among the powers of the earth.'

Introduction
1. From Confederation to Constitution
Part I. The Struggle for Neutrality, 1793–1797: 2. War comes to America
3. The courts as compromise
Part II. The Judiciary at War, 1812–1816: 4. The problems of prize
5. A belligerent court
Part III. Courts for a New Empire, 1816–1825: 6. Confronting revolution
7. Policing the high seas
Epilogue
Index.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]