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 and its appearance in the Contract Clause is supposed to have been due to James Wilson, a graduate of Scottish universities and a civilian. Actually, the term as used in the Contract Clause has been rendered more or less superfluous by the doctrine that “[t]he laws which exist at the time and place of the making of a contract, and where it is to be performed, enter into and form a part of it.” 1 Hence, the Court sometimes recognizes the term in its decisions applying the clause, and sometimes ignores it. In Sturges v. Crowninshield,2 Chief Justice Marshall defined “obligation of contract” as the law that binds a party “to perform his undertaking,” but a little later the same year, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, he set forth the points presented for consideration to be: “1. Is this contract protected by the constitution of the United States? 2. Is it impaired by the acts under which the defendant holds?” 3 The word “obligation” undoubtedly implies that the Constitution was intended to protect only executory contracts&emdash;i.e., contracts still awaiting performance&emdash;but this implication was rejected early on for a certain class of contracts, with immensely important result for the clause.

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References

This text about Obligation is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

[Footnote 1] Walker v. Whitehead, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 314, 317 (1873); Wood v. Lovett, 313 U.S. 362, 370 (1941).

[Footnote 2] 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 122, 197 (1819); see also Curran v. Arkansas, 56 U.S. (15 How.) 304 (1854).

[Footnote 3] 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518, 627 (1819).

Tables of Contents

• Obligation and other Topics in the Contents – Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
• U.S. Constitutional Law Category
• List of amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• Obligation and other Topics in the Constitution Contents
• Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (Table of Contents)
• Clauses of the Constitution (Table of Contents)