According to Bloomberg, the Department of Justice is looking to set up prize court proceedings in the Southern District of Texas, located in Houston, which would be a natural destination for seized oil tankers due to its midstream infrastructure. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Aaron Reitz confirmed that his office is involved in the effort. The U.S. administration wants to appropriate cargo from Iranian vessels under this Prize Law dating back to the 1800s.
Prize Law is 19th-century maritime legislation by which special-purpose tribunals can be set up to speedily determine the legality of the seizure and forfeiture of an enemy’s merchant vessel. The functioning is simple: drag a captured vessel into a domestic port, convene a specialized tribunal, and almost invariably, ownership of both ship and cargo shifts into state hands.
There are some conditions, of course. The vessel must belong to a state that is a belligerent enemy in a conflict and must be doing one of six things: carrying militarily useful goods toward enemy territory (contraband goods); transporting enemy servicemembers; operating under enemy control or charter; using fake documents; violating regulations near naval activity; or attempting to run a blockade. Almost invariably, a captured vessel would be doing—or alleged to be doing—one of those things.
This would seem to fit neatly into the Iranian theater. Iran is an enemy state in a conflict with the U.S., and its vessels would be trying to run a blockade, operating under an enemy charter, and violating regulations. So it would seem to make sense for the U.S. to treat their captured vessels—if any—under this piece of ancient legislation. Normally, the U.S. would use civil forfeiture law for the same purpose. The distinction between the two and their justification offer an interesting insight into the state of the U.S. empire.
The only problem is that Prize Law has not been used since World War II. In May 1945, a famous German ocean liner was captured by U.S. forces shortly before the official end of the war. This was a passenger ship that was used to move troops, and it was likely the last ship to have been taken under Prize Law. In the decades following World War II, however, the U.S. gradually shifted away from specialized prize proceedings toward broader statutory civil forfeiture frameworks.
It was from that time that the U.S. became a major—and then the major—military power in the world. Prior to WWII, the U.S. kept a relatively small peacetime military and operated under a neutral policy toward extra-hemispheric conflicts. In 1945, at the end of WWII, that changed. Following the collapse of European colonial empires and the destruction of their national industries, the U.S. emerged as a global superpower.
There began the construction of the U.S.-led Western order. In 1940, the Destroyers for Bases agreement with the U.K. gave the U.S. the right to have a military presence worldwide. In 1944, the Bretton Woods agreement made the dollar the Western world reserve currency. In 1945, the UN was founded and headquartered in New York. In 1947, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade embedded American leadership within international trade organizations.
For the Western world—and the rest of it after the Soviet Union’s disintegration—the U.S. became the enforcer of international law. It was a law that was made in U.S. interests and that the U.S. only formally abided by, but a law nonetheless. It was approximately from that moment on that, whenever the U.S. wanted to seize another nation’s vessel or its cargo, it generally used civil forfeiture law.
Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Panama, Bosnia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other military campaigns, including full occupations, have been conducted without formally declaring war. These military campaigns were conducted under pretexts such as individual or collective self-defense, being “invited” by a foreign government, humanitarian interventions, or maintaining international peace. But during none of them was Prize Law used or invoked.
Because the U.S. took on the role of global hegemon and enforcer of its international law, the U.S. did officially initiate a war with another country, because that would mean breaking the very system it guaranteed. Other nations broke international law, and the U.S. enforced it on them and “liberated” them. There are, of course, other reasons why the U.S. would not formally declare war, such as avoiding domestic legislative constraints and preserving executive power.
However, if the U.S. acted as the world’s police, then any aggression against it would be an illegality, not an act of war. In this context, the appropriate procedure to seize and appropriate a vessel and its cargo would be a civil procedure: forfeiture.
This distinction indicates a fundamental change in how the U.S. enforced its control of the seas. From the end of the 19th century, the U.S. has functioned—with more or less adherence to it—under Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “Sea Power” theory. This theory posits that national greatness and prosperity are inextricably linked to naval supremacy and that U.S. geography is predisposed to it. Mahan argued for a powerful battle fleet, control of “sea lanes,” and strategic overseas bases.
Mahan’s work produced a strategic cultural shift in the U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt used it to build the “Great White Fleet” and expand U.S. naval power. “Sea Power” provided the intellectual justification for the U.S. to seek overseas markets, build a global navy, and acquire strategic territories, marking its emergence as a world power.
After the end of World War II, the U.S. opted for civil procedures in order to enforce its will because there was no significant challenge to its control of the seas. Rather than acting as a traditional wartime belligerent, the U.S. Navy served as the world’s sea police, maintaining control over maritime highways under the umbrella of American hegemony.
Now, in 2026, unable to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, the administration wants to bring Prize Law back. The U.S. invoking Prize Law in order to seize Iranian vessels would amount to an admission of being at war, even if not formally declared. The judicial applicability hinges on the factual existence of a “state of war,” not on the formal act of a congressional declaration.
If the Trump administration were to reinstate Prize Law, it would be an admission that not only is it at war with Iran, but that it is no longer interested in acting as the world’s police. The Trump administration has been making this point, including in its National Security Strategy; resurrecting this ancient legislation would be a factual admission of that shift.
The point I’m trying to make is not a legal one. I am not a legal expert, and I’m sure there are other administrative and legal cases for choosing to use civil forfeiture instead of Prize Law. What I’m trying to point out is the convergence of facts that seem to indicate a historical undercurrent.
If 1945 might be considered the height of American sea power, 2026 might be considered the turning point of its decline. Abandoning Prize Law once marked America’s ascent as a global power and its role as the world’s maritime guarantor. The Iran war, marked by the inability of the U.S. to control the Strait of Hormuz, signals a turning point in U.S. sea control, and the return of Prize Law a concrete symbol of it.
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