Definition
The Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture was a federal appellate tribunal established by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation to hear appeals in prize cases — disputes over the lawful capture of enemy vessels and cargo during wartime. It operated from 1780 until it was effectively superseded by the federal judiciary created under the Constitution of 1787. The court reviewed decisions of state admiralty courts that had originally adjudicated prize claims, and it represented the first exercise of a genuinely national judicial power in American history, predating the Supreme Court by nearly a decade.
Prize jurisdiction concerned the legality of maritime captures made by commissioned privateers and naval vessels under the law of nations. When an American privateer seized a British merchant ship, the question of whether the capture was lawful — and who was entitled to the proceeds — fell first to state admiralty courts and then, on appeal, to this tribunal.
Why It Matters in Research
This court is a critical institution for researchers working in early American legal history, maritime law, or the development of federal judicial power. Several navigational points:
First, the court's records are a primary source for understanding prize law as it was actually applied in the Revolutionary era. Its decisions drew directly on the law of nations and British admiralty precedent, making them relevant to scholarship on the reception of international law in American courts.
Second, researchers tracing the origins of federal subject-matter jurisdiction will find this court indispensable. The Constitutional Convention's decision to grant Article III courts jurisdiction over admiralty and prize cases was shaped in part by the experience of this tribunal and the persistent problem of state courts resisting its authority. The court had the power to reverse state admiralty judgments, and states occasionally refused to comply — a structural failure that informed the Framers' thinking about supremacy and judicial independence.
Third, the court's records are held at the National Archives and have been studied by legal historians including Henry Bourguignon, whose work remains the most thorough account of the institution. Researchers working from secondary sources alone will miss the texture of how individual cases were argued and decided.
Fourth, do not confuse this court with state admiralty courts, which handled prize cases at first instance. The Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture sat above them. Also do not conflate it with the later federal circuit courts labeled "Courts of Appeals" created by the Judiciary Act of 1891 — the institutional name is similar but the courts are entirely distinct in origin, jurisdiction, and constitutional basis.
Fifth, the court's authority under the Articles of Confederation rested on congressional resolution rather than a written constitutional grant, which raised legitimacy questions that surfaced in litigation. Some of those questions were never cleanly resolved before the court ceased to function.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides a minimal but accurate entry: "A court erected by act of congress under the articles of confederation which preceded the adoption of the constitution. It had appellate jurisdiction in prize causes." This is correct as far as it goes. The entry is characteristically spare — Black's does not explain the court's significance, its structural relationship to state admiralty courts, or its role in the larger story of federal judicial power.
What the historical dictionaries uniformly omit is any discussion of the court's institutional legacy. The Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture was not merely a transitional curiosity; its decisions were later recognized as having continuing legal weight, and at least one of its judgments was enforced decades after the court itself had dissolved, a remarkable episode in early federal jurisprudence. Researchers relying solely on dictionary treatments will not find this dimension addressed.
Jurisdictional Note
This court was a creature of the Continental Congress and operated at the national level, above state admiralty courts in all thirteen original states. It had no state-level equivalent. Its jurisdiction was geographically defined by the reach of American prize-taking operations during the Revolutionary War and was limited to admiralty and maritime prize cases — it had no common law or equity jurisdiction.