452
Opinion of the Court
"It is true that state law must yield to the needs of a uniform federal maritime law when this Court finds inroads on a harmonious system[,] [b]ut this limitation still leaves the States a wide scope. State-created liens are enforced in admiralty. State remedies for wrongful death and state statutes providing for the survival of actions . . . have been upheld when applied to maritime causes of action. . . . State rules for the partition and sale of ships, state laws governing the specific performance of arbitration agreements, state laws regulating the effect of a breach of warranty under contracts of maritime insurance—all these laws and others have been accepted as rules of decision in admiralty cases, even, at times, when they conflicted with a rule of maritime law which did not require uniformity." Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U. S. 354, 373-374 (1959) (footnotes omitted).
It would be idle to pretend that the line separating permissible from impermissible state regulation is readily discernible in our admiralty jurisprudence, or indeed is even entirely consistent within our admiralty jurisprudence. Compare Kossick, supra (state law cannot require provision of maritime contract to be in writing), with Wilburn Boat Co. v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Co., 348 U. S. 310 (1955) (state law can determine effect of breach of warranty in marine insurance policy).3 Happily, it is unnecessary to wrestle
3 Whatever might be the unifying theme of this aspect of our admiralty jurisprudence, it assuredly is not what the dissent takes it to be, namely, the principle that the States may not impair maritime commerce, see post, at 463-464, 467. In Fireman's Fund, for example, we did not inquire whether the breach-of-warranty rule Oklahoma imposed would help or harm maritime commerce, but simply whether the State had power to regulate the matter. The no-harm-to-commerce theme that the dissent plays is of course familiar to the ear—not from our admiralty repertoire, however, but from our "negative Commerce Clause" jurisprudence, see
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