Don’t worry, anything legislated based upon an UNPROVEN “emergency” is ALREADY null and void. Hence it does not need to be “nullified” by anyone.
The Courts must finally take notice of the fact that the alleged “emergency” is abused of only to set up a new political order, called “NWO/GR”, which subverts the existing constitutional order(s) UNLAWFULLY, i.e. through the UNLAWFUL ARROGATION THE THE CONSTITUTION MAKING POWER by a hidden oligarchy, alias the setup of an UNLAWFUL CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY IN DAVOS called "WEF".
IF THE COURTS CONTINUE TO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THIS BASIC FACT OF LIFE, THEY MUST BE DONE AWAY, AS THEY ARE COLLUDED WITH THE OLIGARCHS.
There has never been such a thing like the “NWO/GR”, there is no such a thing, there must never be such a thing. There will never be such a thing.
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Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398 (1934)
Annotation
PRIMARY HOLDING
States may use their protective power in a reasonable manner to affect rights under any contract. There are five main factors that must be considered in determining whether the use is reasonable: whether an economic emergency exists, whether the legislation serves a legitimate objective, whether the actions by the legislature are justified by the emergency and only appropriate to the emergency, whether relief from contractual obligations is unreasonable, and whether the legislation is temporary.
Syllabus
U.S. Supreme Court
Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398 (1934)Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell
No. 370
Argued November 8, 9, 1933
Decided January 8, 1934
290 U.S. 398
Opinions290 U.S. 398fn2/2|>note 2), Vol. VII, pp. 44-48, is to the same effect.Page 290 U. S. 468McCracken v. Hayward, decided at the January Term, 1844, dealt with the same Illinois statute, but involved a sale on execution after judgment, whereas Bronson v. Kinzie involved a mortgage. The decision simply followed the Bronson case. What has been said in respect of the background and setting of that case is equally applicable, and need not be repeated.Gantly's Lessee v. Ewing was decided at the January Term, 1845. It held unconstitutional, as applied to a preexisting mortgage, an act of Indiana providing that no real property should be sold on execution for less than half its appraised value. The statute, like those of Illinois, was enacted for the benefit of hard-pressed debtors as a result of the same emergency. It is referred to by McMaster, supra, as one of the "marks on the statute books" which the "evil times through which the people were passing" had left.Howard v. Bugbee, decided at the December Term, 1860, dealt with an Alabama statute authorizing a redemption of mortgaged property in two years after the sale under a decree. The statute was declared unconstitutional principally upon the authority of Bronson v. Kinzie. The opinion is very short, and does not refer to the question of emergency. The statute was passed, however, in 1842 (the mortgage having been executed prior thereto), and was, therefore, one of the emergency statutes of that period. The Alabama Supreme Court, whose decision was under review here, so treated it, and justified the statute upon that ground. 32 Ala. 713, 716-717. It is worthy of note that, after the decision of this court in the Bugbee case, Judge Walker, who delivered the opinion therein for the Alabama court, filed a dissenting opinion in Ex parte Pollard, Ex parte Woods, 40 Ala. 77, 110, in the course of which he said that his former opinion had been overruled by this court, and he could no longer perceivePage 290 U. S. 469any ground upon which the convictions of a legislature as to the welfare of the people could enlarge the authority to interfere, through the manipulation of the remedy, with the obligation of contracts. The basis of the legislation was, and is shown by the decision of the Alabama Supreme Court sustaining it to be, the existence of the great emergency beginning in 1837, and that question, since the Alabama decision was reviewed, was quite plainly before this court for consideration.Walker v. Whitehead, decided at the December Term, 1872, held unconstitutional a Georgia statute requiring the plaintiff, suing on a debt or contract, to prove as a condition precedent to the entry of judgment in his favor that all legal taxes chargeable by law thereon had been duly paid for each year since the making of the debt or contract. The Georgia Supreme Court, 43 Ga. 538, 544-546, had sustained the act as a measure made necessary by the desperate financial and economic conditions in that state due to the Civil War. This court, making no response to the somewhat fervid presentation of this view of the matter by the state court, simply said that the degree of impairment was immaterial; that any impairment of the obligation of a contract is within the prohibition of the Constitution; that "[a] clearer case of a law impairing the obligation of a contract, within the meaning of the Constitution, can hardly occur."Edwards v. Kearzey, decided at the October Term, 1877, held invalid, as applied to a preexisting debt, the provision of the North Carolina constitution of 1868 increasing the exemptions to which a debtor was entitled. The North Carolina Supreme Court, in a series of decisions, had sustained the state constitutional provision, principally upon the ground (Garrett v. Chesire, 69 N.C. 396, 401-405) that it was adopted at a time when "probably one-half of the debtor class are owing more old debts thanPage 290 U. S. 470they can pay", and that, "[i]f, under our circumstances, our people are to be left without any exemptions, the policy of christian civilization is lost sight of. . . ." In the brief of defendant in error in this court (pp. 7-8), the view was strongly urged that the provision was not so much for the benefit of the debtor as for that of the state, to prevent the evils of almost universal pauperism. Attention was called to the desperate condition of the people of the state following the Civil War, and it was said that one-third of the whole population were paupers, all their property except lands having disappeared; that one-half of the people did not own land enough to afford burial for that proportion of the population, and, against those who did own land, the ante-war debts were piled mountain-high. It was submitted that the state, on being rehabilitated, was not bound to allow the creditor to strip the few self-supporting landowners of their means of existence, and thereby add them to the vast army of the impoverished, but that it had the right to defer a portion of the creditor's claim until the prostrated community had opportunity to recoup some of its losses.This court, in response, reviewed the history of the adoption of the contract impairment clause, and held the state constitutional provision invalid. "Policy and humanity,'" it said,"are dangerous guides in the discussion of a legal proposition. He who follows them far is apt to bring back the means of error and delusion. The prohibition contains no qualification, and we have no judicial authority to interpolate any. Our duty is simply to execute it."[Italics added.]Barnitz v. Beverly was decided May 18, 1896. A law of Kansas extended the period of redemption from a sale under a mortgage for a period of eighteen months, during which time the mortgagor was to remain in possession and receive rents and profits, except as necessary for repairs.Page 290 U. S. 471The act was passed in 1893, in the midst of another panic, the severity of which, still within the memory of the members of this court, is a matter of common knowledge. The effects of that panic extended into every form of industry; bank failures were on an unprecedented scale; more than half the railroads of the country were in the hands of receivers; securities fell to fifty percent, often to twenty-five percent, of their former value; commercial failures and unemployment became general; heavy inroads were made upon public and private resources in caring for the hungry and destitute; [Footnote 2/17] great bodies of idle men -- the so-called "industrial armies" -- marched toward Washington, feeding like locusts upon the country through which they passed.These conditions were brought to the attention of this court. In addition, the Supreme Court of Kansas, 55 Kans. 466, 484-485, 42 Pac. 725, 731, had relied upon them as a justification for the legislation, and had inquired why the state legislature, in a time of general depression, could not"extend the indefinite estate impliedly reserved by the mortgagor, as the federal courts of equity do in particular cases, beyond the six months allowed by the general practice?"In response to all of which, this court, after reviewing its former decisions, held the statute invalid as applied to a sale under a mortgage executed before its passage.The present exigency is nothing new. From the beginning of our existence as a nation, periods of depression, of industrial failure, of financial distress, of unpaid and unpayable indebtedness, have alternated with years of plenty. The vital lesson that expenditure beyond income begets poverty, that public or private extravagance,Page 290 U. S. 472financed by promises to pay, either must end in complete or partial repudiation or the promises be fulfilled by self-denial and painful effort, though constantly taught by bitter experience, seems never to be learned, and the attempt by legislative devices to shift the misfortune of the debtor to the shoulders of the creditor without coming into conflict with the contract impairment clause has been persistent and oft-repeated.The defense of the Minnesota law is made upon grounds which were discountenanced by the makers of the Constitution and have many times been rejected by this court. That defense should not now succeed, because it constitutes an effort to overthrow the constitutional provision by an appeal to facts and circumstances identical with those which brought it into existence. With due regard for the processes of logical thinking, it legitimately cannot be urged that conditions which produced the rule may now be invoked to destroy it.The lower court, and counsel for the appellees in their argument here, frankly admitted that the statute does constitute a material impairment of the contract, but contended that such legislation is brought within the state power by the present emergency. If I understand the opinion just delivered, this court is not wholly in accord with that view. The opinion concedes that emergency does not create power, or increase granted power, or remove or diminish restrictions upon power granted or reserved. It then proceeds to say, however, that, while emergency does not create power, it may furnish the occasion for the exercise of power. I can only interpret what is said on that subject as meaning that, while an emergency does not diminish a restriction upon power, it furnishes an occasion for diminishing it, and this, as it seems to me, is merely to say the same thing by the use of another set of words, with the effect of affirming that which has just been denied.Page 290 U. S. 473It is quite true that an emergency may supply the occasion for the exercise of power, depending upon the nature of the power and the intent of the Constitution with respect thereto. The emergency of war furnishes an occasion for the exercise of certain of the war powers. This the Constitution contemplates, since they cannot be exercised upon any other occasion. The existence of another kind of emergency authorizes the United States to protect each of the states of the Union against domestic violence. Const. Art. IV, § 4. But we are here dealing not with a power granted by the Federal Constitution, but with the state police power, which exists in its own right. Hence, the question is not whether an emergency furnishes the occasion for the exercise of that state power, but whether an emergency furnishes an occasion for the relaxation of the restrictions upon the power imposed by the contract impairment clause, and the difficulty is that the contract impairment clause forbids state action under any circumstances, if it have the effect of impairing the obligation of contracts. That clause restricts every state power in the particular specified, no matter what may be the occasion. It does not contemplate that an emergency shall furnish an occasion for softening the restriction or making it any the less a restriction upon state action in that contingency than it is under strictly normal conditions.The Minnesota statute either impairs the obligation of contracts or it does not. If it does not, the occasion to which it relates becomes immaterial, since then the passage of the statute is the exercise of a normal, unrestricted, state power, and requires no special occasion to render it effective. If it does, the emergency no more furnishes a proper occasion for its exercise than if the emergency were nonexistent. And so, while, in form, the suggested distinction seems to put us forward in a straight line, in reality, it simply carries us back in aPage 290 U. S. 474circle, like bewildered travelers lost in a wood, to the point where we parted company with the view of the state court.If what has now been said is sound, as I think it is, we come to what really is the vital question in the case: does the Minnesota statute constitute an impairment of the obligation of the contract now under review?In answering that question, we must first of all distinguish the present legislation from those statutes which, although interfering in some degree with the terms of contracts, or having the effect of entirely destroying them, have nevertheless been sustained as not impairing the obligation of contracts in the constitutional sense. Among these statutes are such as affect the remedy merely, as to which this court said in Bronson v. Kinzie, supra, at p. 42 U. S. 316, and repeated in Edwards v. Kearzey, supra, p. 96 U. S. 604,"Whatever belongs merely to the remedy may be altered according to the will of the state, provided the alteration does not impair the obligation of the contract. But if that effect is produced, it is immaterial whether it is done by acting on the remedy or directly on the contract itself. In either case, it is prohibited by the Constitution."Another class of statutes is illustrated by those exempting from execution and sale certain classes of property like the tools of an artisan. Chief Justice Taney, in Bronson v. Kinzie, supra, speaking obiter, said that a state might properly exempt necessary implements of agriculture, or the tools of a mechanic, or articles of necessity in household furniture. But this court, in Edwards v. Kearzey, supra, struck down a provision of the North Carolina constitution which exempted every homestead, and the dwelling and buildings used therewith, not exceeding in value $1,000, on the ground of its unconstitutionality as applied to a contract already in existence. Referring to the opinion in Bronson v. Kinzie, the court said (p. 96 U. S. 604)Page 290 U. S. 475that the Chief Justice seems to have had in his mind the maxim "de minimis," etc. "Upon no other ground can any exemption be justified."It is quite true also that "the reservation of essential attributes of sovereign power is also read into contracts", and that the legislature cannot "bargain away the public health or the public morals." General statutes to put an end to lotteries, the sale or manufacture of intoxicating liquors, the maintenance of nuisances, to protect the public safety, etc., although they have the indirect effect of absolutely destroying private contracts previously made in contemplation of a continuance of the state of affairs then in existence but subsequently prohibited, have been uniformly upheld as not violating the contract impairment clause. The distinction between legislation of that character and the Minnesota statute, however, is readily observable. It may be demonstrated by an example. A, engaged in the business of manufacturing intoxicating liquor within a state, makes a contract, we will suppose, with B to manufacture and deliver, at a stipulated price and at some date in the future, a quantity of whisky. Before the day arrives for the performance of the contract, the state passes a law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor. The contract immediately falls, because its performance has ceased to be lawful. This is so because the contract is made upon the implied condition that a particular state of things shall continue to exist, "and, when that state of things ceases to exist, the bargain itself ceases to exist." Marshall v. Glanvill, [1917] 2 K.B. 87, 91. In that case, the plaintiff had been employed by the defendants upon a contract of service. While the contract was in force, the country became involved in the World War, and plaintiff was called into the military service. The court held that this rendered performance unlawful, and that the contract was at an end. It said:Page 290 U. S. 476"Here, the parties clearly made their bargain on the footing that it should continue lawful for the plaintiff to render and for the defendants to accept his services. The rendering and acceptance of these services ceased to be lawful in July, 1916, and thereupon the bargain came to an end."In In re Shipton, Anderson & Co., [1915] 3 K.B. 676, a parcel of wheat then lying in a warehouse was sold for future payment and delivery. The wheat was subsequently requisitioned by the English government, and the sellers became unable to deliver. The Court of King's Bench Division held that the sellers were not liable. Darling, Justice, agreeing with the opinion of Lord Reading, said (pp. 683-684):"If one contracts to do what is then illegal, the contract itself is altogether bad. If, after the contract has been made, it cannot be performed without what is illegal being done, there is no obligation to perform it. In the one case, the making of the contract, in the other case the performance of it, is against public policy. It must be here presumed that the Crown acted legally, and there is no contention to the contrary. We are in a state of war; that is notorious. The subject matter of this contract has been seized by the State acting for the general good. Salus populi suprema lex is a good maxim, and the enforcement of that essential law gives no right of action to whomsoever may be injured by it."The general subject is discussed by this court in Omnia Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 502, and it is there pointed out (p. 261 U. S. 513) that the effect of such a requisition is not to appropriate the contract, but to frustrate it -- an essentially different thing.The same distinction properly may be made as to the contract impairment clause, in respect of subsequent state legislation rendering unlawful a state of things which was lawful when an obligation relating thereto was contracted.Page 290 U. S. 477By such legislation, the obligation is not impaired in the constitutional sense. The contract is frustrated -- it disappears in virtue of an implied condition to that effect read into the contract itself. Thus, in F.A. Tamplin Steamship Co. v. Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Products Co., [1916] 2 A.C. 397, the House of Lords had before it a case where a steamer, then subject to a charter party having nearly three years to run, had been requisitioned by the Admiralty. The applicable rule was there stated to be that the court should examine the contract and the circumstances in which it was made in order to see whether or not, from their nature, the parties must have made their bargain on the footing that a particular state of things would continue to exist. And if they must have done so, a term to that effect would be implied, though not expressed in the contract. In Metropolitan Water Board v. Dick, Kerr & Co., [1918] A.C. 119, 127-128, 137, that rule was reaffirmed, with the additional statement that a subsequent law might be the cause of an impossibility of performance by taking away something from the control of the party as to which thing he had contracted to do or not to do something else, and that the court must determine whether this contingency is of such a character that it can reasonably be implied to have been in the contemplation of the parties when the contract was made.Bearing in mind these aids toward determining whether such an implied condition may be read into a particular contract, let us revert to the example already given with respect to an agreement for the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor. And let us suppose that the state, instead of passing legislation prohibiting the manufacture and sale of the commodity, in which event the doctrine of implied conditions would be pertinent, continues to recognize the general lawfulness of the business, but, because of what it conceives to be a justifying emergency, provides that the time for the performance of existingPage 290 U. S. 478contracts for future manufacture and sale shall be extended for a specified period of time. It is perfectly admissible, in view of the state power to prohibit the business, to read into the contract an implied proviso to the effect that the business of manufacturing and selling intoxicating liquors shall not, prior to the date when performance is due, become unlawful; but in the case last put, to read into the contract a pertinent provisional exception in the event of intermeddling state action would be more than unreasonable, it would be absurd, since we must assume that the contract was made on the footing that, so long as the obligation remained lawful, the impairment clause would effectively preclude a law altering or nullifying it, however exigent the occasion might be.That, in principle, is precisely the case here. The contract is to repay a loan within a fixed time, with the express condition that, upon failure, the property given as security shall be sold, and that, in the absence of a timely redemption, title shall be vested absolutely in the purchaser. This contract was lawful when made, and it has never been anything else. What the legislature has done is to pass a statute which does not have the effect of frustrating the contract by rendering its performance unlawful, but one which, at the election of one of the parties, postpones for a time the effective enforcement of the contractual obligation, notwithstanding the obligation, under the exact terms of the contract, remains lawful and possible of performance after the passage of the statute as it was before.The rent cases -- Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135; Marcus Brown Co. v. Feldman, 256 U. S. 170; Levy Leasing Co. v. Siegel, 258 U. S. 242 -- which are here relied upon dealt with an exigent situation due to a period of scarcity of housing caused by the war. I do not stop to consider the distinctions between them and the present case, or to do more than point out that the question of contract impairmentPage 290 U. S. 479received little, if any, more than casual consideration. The writer of the opinions in the first two cases, speaking for this court in a later case, Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393, 260 U. S. 416, characterized all of them as having gone "to the verge of the law." It therefore seems pertinent to say that decisions which confessedly escape the limbo of unconstitutionality by the exceedingly narrow margin suggested by this characterization should be applied toward the solution of a doubtful question arising in a different field with a very high degree of caution. Reasonably considered, they do not foreclose the question here involved, and it should be determined upon its merits, without regard to those cases.We come back, then, directly to the question of impairment. As to that, the conclusion reached by the court here seems to be that the relief afforded by the statute does not contravene the constitutional provision because it is of a character appropriate to the emergency and allowed upon what are said to be reasonable conditions.It is necessary, first of all, to describe the exact situation. Appellees obtained from appellant a loan of $3,800, and, to secure its payment, executed a mortgage upon real property consisting of land and a fourteen-room house and garage. The mortgage contained the conventional Minnesota provision for foreclosure by advertisement. The mortgagors agreed to pay the debt, together with interest and the taxes and insurance on the property. They defaulted, and, in strict accordance with the bargain, appellant foreclosed the mortgage by advertisement and caused the premises to be sold. Appellant itself bought the property at the sale for a sum equal to the amount of the mortgage debt. The period of redemption from that sale was due to expire on May 2, 1933, and, assuming no redemption at the end of that day, under the law in forcePage 290 U. S. 480when the contract was made and when the property was sold, and in accordance with the terms of the mortgage, appellant would at once have become the owner in fee, and entitled to the immediate possession of the property. The statute here under attack was passed on April 18, 1933. It first recited and declared that an economic emergency existed. As applied to the present case, it arbitrarily extended the period of redemption expiring on May 2, 1933, to May 18, 1933 -- a period of sixteen days, and provided that the mortgagor might apply for a further extension to the district court of the county. That court was authorized to extend the period to a date not later than May 1, 1935, on the condition that the mortgagor should pay to the creditor all or a reasonable part of the income or rental value, as to the court might appear just and equitable, toward the payment of taxes, insurance, interest and principal mortgage indebtedness, and at such times and in such manner as should be fixed by the court. The court to whom the application in this case was made extended the time until May 1, 1935, upon the condition that payment by the mortgagor of the rental value, forty dollars per month, should be made.It will be observed that, whether the statute operated directly upon the contract or indirectly by modifying the remedy, its effect was to extend the period of redemption absolutely for a period of sixteen days, and conditionally for a period of two years. That this brought about a substantial change in the terms of the contract reasonably cannot be denied. If the statute was meant to operate only upon the remedy, it nevertheless, as applied, had the effect of destroying for two years the right of the creditor to enjoy the ownership of the property, and consequently the correlative power, for that period, to occupy, sell or otherwise dispose of it as might seem fit. This postponement, if it had been unconditional, undoubtedly would have constituted an unconstitutionalPage 290 U. S. 481impairment of the obligation. This court so decided in Bronson v. Kinzie, supra, where the period of redemption was extended for a period of only twelve months after a sale under a decree; in Howard v. Bugbee, supra, where the extension was for two years, and in Barnitz v. Beverly, supra, where the period was extended for eighteen months. Those cases, we may assume, still embody the law, since they are not overruled.The only substantial difference between those cases and the present one is that, here, the extension of the period of redemption, and postponement of the creditor's ownership, is accompanied by the condition that the rental value of the property shall, in the meantime, be paid. Assuming, for the moment, that a statute extending the period of redemption may be upheld if something of commensurate value be given the creditor by way of compensation, a conclusion that payment of the rental value during the two years' period of postponement is even the approximate equivalent of immediate ownership and possession is purely gratuitous. How can such payment be regarded, in any sense, as compensation for the postponement of the contract right? The ownership of the property to which petitioner was entitled carried with it not only the right to occupy or sell it, but, ownership being retained, the right to the rental value as well. So that, in the last analysis, petitioner simply is allowed to retain a part of what is its own as compensation for surrendering the remainder. Moreover, it cannot be foreseen what will happen to the property during that long period of time. The buildings may deteriorate in quality; the value of the property may fall to a sum far below the purchase price; the financial needs of appellant may become so pressing as to render it urgently necessary that the property shall be sold for whatever it may bring.However these or other supposable contingencies may be, the statute denies appellant for a period of two yearsPage 290 U. S. 482the ownership and possession of the property -- an asset which, in any event, is of substantial character, and which possibly may turn out to be of great value. The statute, therefore, is not merely a modification of the remedy; it effects a material and injurious change in the obligation. The legally enforceable right of the creditor when the statute was passed was, at once upon default of redemption, to become the fee simple owner of the property. Extension of the time for redemption for two years, whatever compensation be given in its place, destroys that specific right and the correlative obligation, and does so nonetheless though it assume to create in invitum another and different right and obligation of equal value. Certainly, if A should contract with B to deliver a specified quantity of wheat on or before a given date, legislation, however much it might purport to act upon the remedy, which had the effect of permitting the contract to be discharged by the delivery of corn of equal value, would subvert the constitutional restriction.A statute which materially delays enforcement of the mortgagee's contractual right of ownership and possession does not modify the remedy merely; it destroys, for the period of delay, all remedy so far as the enforcement of that right is concerned. The phrase, "obligation of a contract," in the constitutional sense, imports a legal duty to perform the specified obligation of that contract, not to substitute and perform, against the will of one of the parties, a different, albeit equally valuable, obligation. And a state, under the contract impairment clause, has no more power to accomplish such a substitution than has one of the parties to the contract against the will of the other. It cannot do so either by acting directly upon the contract or by bringing about the result under the guise of a statute in form acting only upon the remedy. If it could, the efficacy of the constitutional restriction would, in large measure, be made to disappear.Page 290 U. S. 483As this court has well said, whatever tends to postpone or retard the enforcement of a contract, to that extent weakens the obligation. According to one Latin proverb, "He who gives quickly gives twice," and, according to another, "He who pays too late pays less.""Any authorization of the postponement of payment, or of means by which such postponement may be effected, is in conflict with the constitutional inhibition."Louisiana v. New Orleans, 102 U. S. 203, 102 U. S. 207. I am not able to see any real distinction between a statute which in substantive terms alters the obligation of a debtor-creditor contract so as to extend the time of its performance for a period of two years, and a statute which, though in terms acting upon the remedy, is aimed at the obligation (as distinguished, for example, from the judicial procedure incident to the enforcement thereof), and which does, in fact, withhold from the creditor, for the same period of time, the stipulated fruits of his contract.I quite agree with the opinion of the court that whether the legislation under review is wise or unwise is a matter with which we have nothing to do. Whether it is likely to work well or work ill presents a question entirely irrelevant to the issue. The only legitimate inquiry we can make is whether it is constitutional. If it is not, its virtues, if it have any, cannot save it; if it is, its faults cannot be invoked to accomplish its destruction. If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch, as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned. Being unable to reach any other conclusion than that the Minnesota statute infringes the constitutional restriction under review, I have no choice but to say so.I am authorized to say that MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER, MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS, and MR. JUSTICE BUTLER concur in this opinion.[Footnote 2/1]In such cases, it is no more necessary to modify constitutional rules to govern new conditions than it is to create new words to describe them. The commerce clause is a good example. When that was adopted, its application was necessarily confined to the regulation of the primitive methods of transportation then employed; but railroads, automobiles and aircraft automatically were brought within the scope and subject to the terms of the commerce clause the moment these new means of transportation came into existence, just as they were at once brought within the meaning of the word "carrier" as defined by the dictionaries.[Footnote 2/2]Thus, McMaster (History of the People of the United States, Vol. 1, p. 425) -- after referring to the conditions in Rhode Island, where "the bonds of society were dissolved by paper money and tender laws"; in New Jersey, where the people nailed up the doors of their courthouses; in Virginia, where the debtors "set fire to theirs in order to stop the course of justice" -- says:"The newspapers were full of bankrupt notices. The farmers' taxes amounted to near the rent of their farms. Mechanics wandered up and down the streets of every city destitute of work. Ships, shut out from every port of Europe, lay rotting in the harbors."Channing (History of the United States, Vol. III, pp. 410-411, 482-483) paints this graphic picture of the situation:"Nowhere was the immediate prospect more gloomy than in South Carolina. . . . In Massachusetts, at the other end of the line, the case was as bad, if not worse . . . the resources of New England were insufficient to pay even what was then owing. The case of New York was even more desperate, and, for the moment, Philadelphia alone seemed prosperous, for the wastage of the later years of the war had been severely felt in Virginia. . . ."". . . Virginia was honeycombed with debt. . . .""In South Carolina, the planters were even more heavily in debt. . . . The case of Thomas Bee is to the point. His creditors had secured executions against him; the sheriff had seized his property and had sold it at one-thirteenth of what it would have brought at private sale in ordinary times."Nevins (The American States During and After the Revolution, p. 536) says:"The town of Greenwich computed that, during each of the five years preceding 1786, the farmers had paid in taxes the entire rental value of their land."John Fiske (The Critical Period of American History, 8th ed., pp. 175, 180) thus describes conditions:". . . about the marketplaces, men spent their time angrily discussing politics, and scarcely a day passed without street fights, which at times grew into riots. In the country, too, no less than in the cities, the goddess of discord reigned. The farmers determined to starve the city people into submission, and they entered into an agreement not to send any produce into the cities until the merchants should open their shops and begin selling their goods for paper [money] at its face value. . . . [T]he farmers threw away their milk, used their corn for fuel, and let their apples rot on the ground. . . ."". . . the courts were broken up by armed mobs. At Concord, one Job Shattuck brought several hundred armed men into the town and surrounded the courthouse, while, in a fierce harangue, he declared that the time had come for wiping out all debts."Dr. David Ramsay (History of the United States,2d ed., 1818, Vol. III, pp. 447), a member of the old Congress under the Confederation, and who lived in the midst of the events of which he speaks, says:"The nonpayment of public debts sometimes inferred a necessity, and always furnished an apology, for not discharging private contracts. Confidence between man and man received a deadly wound. Public faith being first violated, private engagements lost much of their obligatory force. . . .""From the combined operation of these causes, trade languished; credit expired; gold and silver vanished, and real property was depreciated to an extent equal to that of the depreciation of continental money. . . ."And, finally, George Ticknor Curtis, in his History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 332-333:"All contemporary evidence assures us that this [1783 to 1787] was a period of great pecuniary distress, arising from the depreciation of the vast quantities of paper money issued by the Federal and State governments; from rash speculations; from the uncertain and fluctuating condition of trade, and from the great amount of foreign goods forced into the country as soon as its ports were opened. Naturally, in such a state of things, the debtors were disposed to lean in favor of those systems of government and legislation which would tend to relieve or postpone the payment of their debts, and as such relief could come only from their State governments, they were naturally the friends of State rights and State authority, and were consequently not friendly to any enlargement of the powers of the Federal Constitution. The same causes which led individuals to look to legislation for irregular relief from the burden of their private contracts led them also to regard public obligations with similar impatience. Opposed to this numerous class of persons were all those who felt the high necessity of preserving inviolate every public and private obligation; who saw that the separate power of the States could not accomplish what was absolutely necessary to sustain both public and private credit, and they were as naturally disposed to look to the resources of the Union for these benefits, as the other class were to look in an opposite direction. These tendencies produced, in nearly every State, a struggle not as between two organized parties, but one that was all along a contest for supremacy between opposite opinions, in which it was at one time doubtful to which side the scale would turn."[Footnote 2/3]Charles Warren, The Making of the Constitution, pp. 6:"The actual evils which led to the Federal Convention of 1787 are familiar to every reader of history, and need no detailed description here. As is well known, they arose, in general, . . . ; second, from State legislation unjust to citizens and productive of dissensions with neighboring States -- the State laws particularly complained of being those staying process of the Courts, making property a tender in payment of debts, issuing paper money, interfering with foreclosure of mortgages. . . ."Fiske, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/2|>note 2, p. 168:"By 1786, under the universal depression and want of confidence, all trade had well nigh stopped, and political quackery, with its cheap and dirty remedies, had full control of the field. . . . [A] craze for fictitious wealth in the shape of paper money ran like an epidemic through the country. There was a Barmecide feast of economic vagaries; . . . And when we have threaded the maze of this rash legislation, we shall the better understand that clause in our federal constitution which forbids the making of laws impairing the obligation of contracts."Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, pp. 31-32:"Money capital was . . . being positively attacked by the makers of paper money, stay laws, pine barren acts, and other devices for depreciating the currency or delaying the collection of debts. In addition, there was a widespread derangement of the monetary system. . . .""Creditors, naturally enough, resisted all of these schemes in the state legislatures, and . . . turned to the idea of a national government so constructed as to prevent laws impairing the obligation of contract, emitting paper money, and otherwise benefiting debtors. It is idle to inquire whether the rapacity of the creditors or the total depravity of the debtors . . . was responsible for this deep and bitter antagonism. It is sufficient for our purposes to discover its existence, and to find its institutional reflex in the Constitution."Fisher Ames, "Eulogy on Washington," The Life and Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. II, p. 76:"Accordingly, in some of the States, creditors were treated as outlaws; bankrupts were armed with legal authority to be persecutors, and, by the shock of all confidence and faith, society was shaken to its foundations."Illuminating comment upon some of this state legislation is to be found in Chapter VI (Vol. I) of Bancroft's "History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States," under the heading, "State Laws Impairing the Obligation of Contracts Prove the Need of an Overruling Union," pp. 230-236:"[In Massachusetts] Repeated temporary stay laws gave no real relief; they flattered and deceived the hope of the debtor, exasperating alike him and his creditor. . . ."". . . [In Pennsylvania] in December, 1784, debts contracted before 1777 were made payable in three annual instalments. . . .""Maryland, . . . In 1782, . . . enacted a stay law extending to January, 1784, . . .""Georgia, in August, 1782, stayed execution for two years from and after the passing of the act. . . ."". . . [In South Carolina in 1782] the commencement of suits was suspended till ten days after the sitting of the next general assembly. . . . On the twenty-sixth day of March, 1784, came the great ordinance for the payment of debts in four annual instalments, . . ."Ramsay, supra, note 2, Vol. 3, 65-66, 106:"The distrust which prevailed among the people respecting the punctual fulfillment of contracts arose from the powers claimed and, in too many instances, exercised by the state legislatures, for impairing the obligation of contracts; . . . These prolific sources of evil were completely done away by the new constitution. . . ."". . . State legislatures in too many instances yielded to the necessities of their constituents and passed laws by which creditors were compelled either to wait for payment of their just demands, on the tender of security or to take property at a valuation or paper money falsely purporting to be the representative of specie. These laws were considered by the British as inconsistent with . . . the treaty. . . . The Americans palliated these measures by the plea of necessity. . . ."Ramsay, The History of South Carolina (1809), Vol. II, pp. 429-430:"The effects of these laws interfering between debtors and creditors were extensive. They destroyed public credit and confidence between man and man; injured the morals of the people, and, in many instances, ensured and aggravated the final ruin of the unfortunate debtors for whose temporary relief they were brought forward."[Footnote 2/4]Bancroft, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/3|>note 3, Vol. I, p. 239.[Footnote 2/5]Id., Vol. I, p. 241.[Footnote 2/6]Id., Vol. II, p. 136.[Footnote 2/7]See Curtis, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/2|>note 2, Vol. 2, pp. 366-367.[Footnote 2/8]Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio, Art. II; Thorpe, American Charters, Constitutions and Organic Laws, Vol. 2, pp. 957, 961.[Footnote 2/9]Elliott's Debates, Vol. V, pp. 485, 488, 545-546; id. Vol. I pp. 271, 311; Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. II, pp. 439-440, 596-597, 610.[Footnote 2/10]Elliot's Debates, Vol. I, pp. 344, 376-377.[Footnote 2/11]Id. Vol. I, pp. 491 492.[Footnote 2/12]Id., Vol. III, p. 478.[Footnote 2/13]Id., Vol. IV, pp. 156, 191.[Footnote 2/14]Id., Vol. IV, p. 333.Mr. Warren, in his book, "The Making of the Constitution," pp. 552-555, has an interesting resume of the proceedings in the Convention and of the conflicting views which were before the state conventions for consideration. He says in part:"The Convention then was asked to perfect their action in favor of honesty and morality by adding a prohibition on the States which would put an end to statutes enacting laws for special individuals, setting aside Court judgments, repealing vested rights, altering corporate charters, staying the bringing or prosecution of suits, preventing foreclosure of mortgages, altering the terms of contracts, and allowing tender in payment of debts of something other than that contracted for. The State Legislatures had hitherto passed such laws in abundant measure, and the situation was graphically described later by Chief Justice Marshall in one of his most noted decisions [Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 213, 25 U. S. 354], as follows:"" 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. The mischief had become so great, so alarming, as not only to impair commercial intercourse and threaten the existence of credit, but to sap the morals of the people and destroy the sanctity of private faith. To guard against the continuance of the evil was an object of deep interest with all the truly wise as well as virtuous of this great community, and was one of the important benefits expected from a reform of the government.""To obviate the conditions thus described, King of Massachusetts proposed the insertion of a new restriction on the States. . . . Wilson and Madison supported his motion. Mason and G. Morris, however believed that it went too far in interfering with the powers of the States. . . . There was also a genuine belief by some delegates that, under some circumstances and in financial crises, such stay and tender laws might be necessary to avert calamitous loss to debtors. . . . The other delegates had been deeply impressed by the disastrous social and economic effects of the stay and tender laws which had been enacted by most of the States between 1780 and 1786, and they decided to make similar legislation impossible in the future."[Footnote 2/15]See Dewey, Financial History of the United States, p. 229, et seq.; Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. IV, p. 276, et seq.; McMaster, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/2|>note 2, Vol. VI, pp. 389, et seq., 523, et seq., 623, et seq.[Footnote 2/16]See Dewey, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/15|>note 15, p. 243, et seq.; McMaster, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/2|>note 2, Vol. VI, p. 627, et seq., Vol. VII, p. 19, et seq.; Centennial History of Illinois, Vol. II, p. 231, et seq.[Footnote 2/17]See Dewey, supra, 290 U.S. 398fn2/15|>note 15, p. 444, et seq.; Andrews, The Last Quarter Century in the United States, Vol. II, p. 301, et seq.
