Comment by Barry W. Ashe
A continuing objective of maritime legislation in the United States has been to compel the safe navigation of public waterways. Among these legislative efforts, the regulation of pilotage is especially important because of the preeminent position that a pilot holds in the safe conduct of vessels into and out of various ports. Recognizing the difficult nature of this facet of vessel navigation, states have enacted regulations that require the presence of licensed pilots on vessels transiting the states' harbors and streams. Additionally, the federal government has established a regulatory scheme for pilot licensure. Unfailingly, legislatures have chosen licensing procedures to restrict the pilotage of vessels to qualified persons. Revocation and suspension proceedings are used to facilitate the enforcement of the various pilotage regulations.
On occasion, courts have been called upon to review the dynamics of the concurrent federal and state systems of pilotage regulation. The process of legislative enactment and judicial interpretation of these pilotage regulation schemes has yielded a bifurcated structure of jurisdiction in which the federal or state system of regulation may operate to the exclusion of the other. The exclusivity of the state regulation of pilots directing the movements of foreign vessels and registered United States vessels conceivably may give rise to enforcement problems for the agency primarily charged with the task of ensuring the safe navigation of public waterways—the United States Coast Guard. It is the purpose of this comment to delineate the problem of enforcement posed by this concurrent system of pilotage regulation, to trace the legislative and jurisprudential development of the jurisdictional dichotomy, and to suggest several alternatives for modifying the existing regulatory scheme to effectuate the broad purpose of safe navigation on the waterways of the United States.
About the Author
Barry W. Ashe.
Citation
58 Tul. L. Rev. 1460 (1984)