2013-2014 U.S. Maritime Legislative Developments

This article originally appeared in the Journal of Maritime Law & Commerce, Vol. 46, No. 3. Reprinted with permission. Any opinions in this article are not those of Winston & Strawn or its clients. The opinions in this article are the authors’ opinions only.

The 113th Congress was generally known as a Congress frozen into inactivity by deep seated policy disputes. Not surprisingly, the 113th Congress did not have much to show for its efforts in general after the two one-year sessions. Little was different in the maritime sphere, where Congress passed no major legislation during the two years other than the Howard Coble Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2014 (the “2014 Coast Guard Act”). That legislation touched, as is usually the case with Coast Guard authorization bills, a wide range of maritime policy and legal matters ranging from the treatment of abandoned seafarers in environmental investigations to cruise vessel passenger protections.