Definition
A commission of appraisement and sale is a procedural device in admiralty law by which a court orders the marshal to value and then sell property that has been arrested in an action in rem. When a vessel or cargo is seized by admiralty process and the court determines the property should be liquidated rather than held or released on bail, it issues this commission to carry out both functions in sequence: first, a formal valuation of the arrested property; then, a sale conducted under the court's authority.
Where only the value of the property is in dispute—such as when a party seeks to substitute bail for the arrested res—the court may issue a commission of appraisement alone, without the accompanying sale component.
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Core Elements
A commission of appraisement and sale in admiralty typically involves the following steps:
1. Arrest in rem: The property (vessel, cargo, or other maritime res) has been seized under admiralty process as the defendant in the action.
2. Court order: The court determines that sale is appropriate, either because the property is perishable, costs of custody are excessive, or the action has progressed to a point requiring liquidation.
3. Direction to the marshal: The commission is directed to the marshal of the district, commanding him to carry out the appraisement.
4. Appraisement: The marshal, typically with the assistance of appointed appraisers, reduces the property to a formal valuation—determining its fair market value on the record.
5. Sale: Following appraisement, the marshal conducts a public sale of the property, with proceeds deposited into the registry of the court to stand in place of the res for purposes of satisfying any judgment.
Where the commission is for appraisement only, the process stops after step 4, and the appraised value governs the amount of bail or security required for release of the property.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in nineteenth-century admiralty practice materials and early federal court procedure. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century maritime litigation records—particularly district court admiralty dockets—will encounter references to these commissions as routine procedural instruments. Understanding the distinction between a commission of appraisement only and a full commission of appraisement and sale is essential for interpreting what stage a case had reached and what happened to the seized property.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is truncated in the surviving text, cutting off mid-sentence during the description of the marshal's duties under the appraisement commission. Researchers should not treat that source as a complete account of the procedure; supplementary research in contemporaneous admiralty practice guides and federal rules of admiralty procedure will be necessary.
Modern federal admiralty practice is governed by the Supplemental Rules for Admiralty or Maritime Claims and Asset Forfeiture Actions (appended to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure). The vocabulary has shifted: contemporary sources refer to "sale of arrested property" under Supplemental Rule E(9) rather than to a "commission of appraisement and sale" as a named instrument. Researchers bridging historical and modern admiralty materials need to map this terminological shift carefully.
The division between appraisement-only and appraisement-and-sale also has a functional parallel in modern substitute-security practice, where a party posts a bond or letter of undertaking in lieu of the arrested res. The court's need to fix the value of the property before releasing it on bail mirrors the historical appraisement-only commission.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence is the sole historical dictionary source available for this entry, and its treatment, while fragmentary, correctly identifies the two forms of the commission and their distinct purposes. The entry draws a clear practical line: appraisement and sale is the full instrument used when the property will be liquidated; appraisement alone suffices when the dispute is only about value for bail purposes. This distinction was well-established in mid-to-late nineteenth-century admiralty practice.
The truncation of the Rapalje & Lawrence entry before completion of the marshal's duty description is a gap researchers should note. Earlier admiralty practice manuals—including Conkling's Admiralty Jurisdiction and Practice (various nineteenth-century editions) and Benedict on Admiralty—provide fuller accounts of the marshal's role in conducting appraisements and the procedural mechanics of admiralty sales.
No competing definition from other historical dictionaries is available in this corpus, but the term was sufficiently standardized in admiralty practice that variation across sources would likely be minimal on the core definition.
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Jurisdictional Note
Admiralty jurisdiction in the United States is exclusively federal. State courts do not issue commissions of appraisement and sale in this sense, and the term has no meaningful state-law counterpart. Practice varied somewhat across federal districts in the nineteenth century before uniform supplemental admiralty rules were adopted.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia: Statutory and Equitable Rights of Redemption — Pre-Sale and Post-Sale Redemption Periods (realestate_46) — tangentially relevant for understanding how court-ordered property sales interact with redemption rights, though that entry addresses land sales rather than admiralty res.
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