Article by David Ashley Bagwell
In a May 1985 letter to the Congress of the United States concerning pending oil spill legislation, the President of the Maritime Law Association urged the enactment of a uniform and exclusive federal statutory scheme to replace ‘the present patchwork of federal and state laws [that] is unwieldy, inconsistent, inefficient and unnecessarily expensive.’ It is my sad duty to quilt that virtually unchanged patchwork.
The patchwork consists of (1) the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA, or Clean Water Act), (2) the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA, sometimes called the Superfund Act), (3) the Refuse Act, (4) the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), (5) the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, and (6) the Deepwater Port Act of 1974. The patchwork also includes the federal common law, the general maritime law, state statutes, various conventions and protocols, and foreign law.
About the Author
David Ashley Bagwell. B.A. Vanderbilt University 1968; Corning Travelling Fellow 1969; J.D. University of Alabama 1973.
Citation
62 Tul. L. Rev. 433 (1988)