In 2024 the United States Supreme Court announced its decision in Great Lakes Insurance SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Co., LLC, the Court’s first marine-insurance decision since its infamous Wilburn Boat case almost seventy years ago. Wilburn Boat had created an unprecedented regime under which most marine-insurance disputes in U.S. courts were governed by state law rather than federal maritime law. The Raiders Retreat Court held that choice-of-law clauses in marine-insurance policies are presumptively enforceable. That specific holding endorses a possible solution to many of the problems that the Wilburn Boat decision created. More broadly, the Raiders Retreat majority opinion and a separate concurring opinion by Justice Thomas call into question the long-accepted understanding of Wilburn Boat that the lower courts and the maritime bar have shared for decades. Going forward, it is unclear how broadly Wilburn Boat will continue to apply and what that earlier decision will mean when it does apply.

For half a century, Pan American World Airways v Aetna Casualty & Surety Co has been recognized as the leading American case interpreting the term “war” in the context of an insurance contract dispute. The case relays an “ancient international law definition” of the term purportedly based on English and American caselaw representing the idea that “war” only encapsulates hostilities performed by de jure or de facto governments. As modern conflicts regularly involve violence performed by non-state actors, this definition has continued to cause interpretive problems in insurance cases, which raises the question of whether the approach is indeed historically entrenched. Retracing the analytical steps contained in the Pan American decision, this brief article argues that the rule might not be so ancient after all.