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OBAMA AND THE CONTRACT CLAUSE

By "Captain Liberty" and "Rumpole"

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of NobilityU.S. CONST. ART. 1, SECT 10. In Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat, 25 U.S. 213 (1827), Chief Justice John Marshal wrote in dissent on what drove the framers to write the contracts clause into the Constitution: The power of changing the relative situation of debtor and creditor, of interfering with contracts, a power which comes home to every man, touches the interest of all, and controls the conduct of every individual in those things which he supposes to be proper for his own exclusive management, had been used to such an excess by the state legislatures, as to break in upon the ordinary intercourse of society, and destroy all confidence between man and man...continue to full post

Full post as published by Justice Building Blog on March 22, 2009 (boomark / email).