The U.S. General Accounting Office has found the Coast Guard’s administrative law judge system to be a valid court operation that affords justice to mariners brought to trial.
The report serves to polish the image of a civil law trial system that was tarnished in 2007 by a report in the Baltimore Sun and hearings before a U.S. House subcommittee.
The newspaper reported that mariners stood little chance of winning cases brought by the Coast Guard into its administrative law system.
But the GAO study did not consider the standard of justice achieved in the system when it takes up cases brought against fishermen and industry merchants by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which contracts to have its charges tried in the Coast Guard courts.