Tag: Art. 1. Sec. 10
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Treaties
Treaties, Alliances, or Confederations (Powers Denied to the States)At the time of the Civil War, the Court relied on the prohibition on treaties, alliances, or confederations in holding that the Confederation formed by the seceding states could not be recognized as having any legal existence.<a nam…
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Right to Alter Corporate Charters
Reservation of Right to Alter or Repeal Corporate ChartersThere are four principles or doctrines by which the Court has broken down the force of the Dartmouth College decision in great measure in favor of state legislative power. By the logic of Dartmouth College itself, the state may reserve in a c…
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Status of Judicial Decisions
Status of Judicial Decisions (Obligation of Contracts)Although the highest state court usually has final authority in determining the construction as well as the validity of contracts entered into under the laws of the state, and federal courts will be bound by decisions of the highest state court o…
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Strict Construction
Strict Construction and the Police PowerThe police power, too, has frequently benefitted from the doctrine of strict construction, although this recourse is today seldom, if ever, necessary in this connection. Some of the more striking cases may be briefly summarized. The provision in the charter of…
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Tax Exemptions
Tax Exemptions: When Not "Contracts"From a different point of view, the Court has sought to distinguish between grants of privileges, whether to individuals or to corporations, which are contracts and those which are mere revocable licenses, although on account of the doctrine of presumed …
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Tonnage Duties
Tonnage DutiesThe purpose of the Tonnage Clause is "to 'restrai[n] the states themselves from the exercise' of the taxing power 'injuriously to the interests of each other.' . . . In writing the Tonnage Clause, the Framers recognized that, if 'the states had been left free t…
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Vested Rights
Vested Rights Not Included (Obligation of Contracts)The term "contracts" is used in the Contract Clause in its popular sense of an agreement of minds. The clause therefore does not protect vested rights that are not referable to such an agreement between the state and an individual, such a…
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Remedy
Remedy a Part of the Private ObligationSuppose, however, that one of the parties to a contract fails to live up to his obligation as thus determined. The contract itself may now be regarded as at an end, but the injured party, nevertheless, has a new set of rights in its stead, those which are furni…
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Obligation
"Obligation" Defined (Obligation of Contracts)A contract is analyzable into two elements: the agreement, which comes from the parties, and the obligation, which comes from the law and makes the agreement binding on the parties. The concept of obligation is an importation from the civil law…
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Police Power
Private Contracts and the Police PowerThe increasing subjection of public grants to the police power of the states has been previously pointed out. That purely private contracts should be in any stronger situation in this respect obviously would be anomalous in the extreme. In point of fact, the abi…
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Powers Denied to the States
Clause 1. Treaties, Coining Money, Impairing Contracts, EtcNo 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 po…
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Private Contracts
Private ContractsThe term "private contract" is, naturally, not all-inclusive. A judgment, though granted in favor of a creditor, is not a contract in the sense of the Constitution,1 nor is marriage. <a name=t2 href=#f2 target="_self&q…
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Privilege Taxes
Privilege Taxes (Duties on Exports or Imports)A state law requiring importers to take out a license to sell imported goods amounts to an indirect tax on imports and hence is unconstitutional.1 Likewise, a franchise tax upon foreign corporations engag…
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Property Taxes
Property Taxes (Duties on Exports or Imports)Overruling a line of prior decisions that it thought misinterpreted the language of Brown v. Maryland, the Court now holds that the clause does not prevent a state from levying a nondiscriminatory, ad valorem property tax upon goods that are no longer in …
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Public Contracts
"Contracts" Include Public Contracts and Corporate Charters.The question, which was settled very early, was whether the clause was intended to be applied solely in protection of private contracts or in the protection also of public grants, or, more broadly, in protection of public contract…