Americans understood the importance of establishing judicial authority over maritime war from the moment they began resisting British hegemony in the 1770s. The states’ unwillingness to prevent American seafarers from violating the rights of foreigners during the American Revolution provoked diplomatic controversies that undermined the drive for independence. After the war, supporters and skeptics of the new Constitution fiercely debated its creation of a federal judiciary. Anti-Federalist critics feared the centralizing and despotic tendencies of life-tenured judges who would be “subject to no control.” But even the “most bigotted idolizers of state authority,” Alexander Hamilton famously wrote in The Federalist, agreed that the federal courts should have exclusive authority over maritime cases. If Americans truly wanted a government that could fulfill the nation’s international obligations and maintain harmony with other sovereigns, they needed a judiciary with the power to resolve disputes arising at sea.