Cite as: 516 U. S. 442 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
were approved despite the faultlessness of the ship's owner. Because the entire mission of the ship was unlawful, admiralty law treated the vessel itself as if it were the offender.5 Moreover, under "the maritime law of the Middle Ages the ship was not only the source, but the limit, of liability." 6
The early admiralty cases demonstrate that the law may reasonably presume that the owner of valuable property is aware of the principal use being made of that property. That presumption provides an adequate justification for the deprivation of one's title to real estate because of another's adverse possession for a period of years or for a seizure of such property because its principal use is unlawful. Thus, in Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U. S. 395, 399 (1878), we upheld the seizure of premises on which the lessee operated an unlawful distillery when the owner "knowingly suffer[ed] and permitt[ed] his land to be used as a site" for that distillery. And despite the faultlessness of their owners, we have upheld seizures of vehicles being used to trans-5 "The vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attaches, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner. The vessel or boat (says the act of Congress) from which such piratical aggression, &c., shall have been first attempted or made shall be condemned. Nor is there any thing new in a provision of this sort. It is not an uncommon course in the admiralty, acting under the law of nations, to treat the vessel in which or by which, or by the master or crew thereof, a wrong or offence has been done as the offender, without any regard whatsoever to the personal misconduct or responsibility of the owner thereof. And this is done from the necessity of the case, as the only adequate means of suppressing the offence or wrong, or insuring an indemnity to the injured party. The doctrine also is familiarly applied to cases of smuggling and other misconduct under our revenue laws; and has been applied to other kindred cases, such as cases arising on embargo and non-intercourse acts. In short, the acts of the master and crew, in cases of this sort, bind the interest of the owner to the ship, whether he be innocent or guilty; and he impliedly submits to whatever the law denounces as a forfeiture attached to the ship by reason of their unlawful or wanton wrongs." Ibid.
6 Holmes, The Common Law, at 27.
461
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