Cite as: 532 U. S. 811 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
U. S. 199, 214, n. 11 (1996) (dictum), but Moragne's facts were limited to the duty of seaworthiness, and so the issue of wrongful death for negligence has remained technically open. We are able to find no rational basis, however, for distinguishing negligence from seaworthiness. It is no less a distinctively maritime duty than seaworthiness: The common-law duties of care have not been adopted and retained unmodified by admiralty, but have been adjusted to fit their maritime context, see, e. g., Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U. S. 625, 630-632 (1959), and a century ago the maritime law exchanged the common law's rule of contributory negligence for one of comparative negligence, see, e. g., The Max Morris, 137 U. S. 1, 14-15 (1890); Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406, 408-409 (1953). Consequently the "tensions and discrepancies" in our precedent arising "from the necessity to accommodate state remedial statutes to exclusively maritime substantive concepts"—which ultimately drove this Court in Moragne to abandon The Harrisburg, see 398 U. S., at 401—were no less pronounced with maritime negligence than with unseaworthiness. In fact, both cases cited by Moragne to exemplify those discrepancies involved maritime negligence, see ibid. (citing Hess v. United States, 361 U. S. 314 (1960); Goett v. Union Carbide Corp., 361 U. S. 340 (1960) (per curiam)); see also Nelson v. United States, 639 F. 2d 469, 473 (CA9 1980) (opinion by then-Judge Kennedy) (concluding that uniformity concerns required Moragne's application to negligence). It is true, as petitioner observes, that we have held admiralty accommodation of state remedial statutes to be constitutionally permissible, see, e. g., Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U. S. 233, 242 (1921); The Tungus v. Skovgaard, 358 U. S. 588, 594 (1959),1 but that does not re-1 The issue addressed in Yamaha Motor Corp., U. S. A. v. Calhoun, 516 U. S. 199 (1996), whether state remedies may in some instances supplement a federal maritime remedy, is not presented by this case, where respondent is no longer pursuing state remedies. After the District
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