10 Or. 549 | Or. | 1847
By the Court,
This cause came up from the circuit court upon a statement of facts presented in a bill of exceptions. On the 4th of November, 1845, the defendant executed to the plaintiff a note for $150, payable November 1, 1846. An action was brought upon this note before a Justice of the Peace, where judgment was rendered against the maker, Horn
The organic law, art. I., sec. 2, declares that “no law ought to be made or have force in said territory, that shall, in any manner whatever, interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, Iona fide, and without fraud previously formed.” This is a prohibition of great moment affecting extensively the legislative branch of the established government. It is taken in the substance of its provisions from the constitution of the United States, in which there is no prohibitory clause which has given rise' to more various and able discussion or more protracted litigation. The first important case arising under the clause as found in that constitution was the case of Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch, 87. In that case, it was decided that when a law was in its nature a contract and absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of that law could not divest those rights. The supreme court went again and more largely into the consideration of this interesting and fundamental doctrine, in the case of Territ v. Taylor, 9 Cranch, 43. It was there held that a legislative grant, competently made, vested an indefeasible and irrevocable title. But it was in the great case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat., 518, that the inhibition to impair by law the obligation of contracts received the most elaborate discussion. In that case, the principles previously recognised were not only greatly elaborated, but efficiently and instructively applied to new cases. The late venerated and learned Judge Story added many new and interesting views of the nature of contracts which the framers of the constitution intended to protect. The argument of the court in this
In the case of Sturgis v. Crowningshield, 4 Wheat., 122, the operation and effect of this constitutional prohibition was again extensively inquired into. This was a case which arose out of the retrospective operation of an act of the legislature of New York, passed in April, 1811, by which the defendant had been discharged as an insolvent debtor upon his single petition, from the obligation to pay two promissory notes executed by him in March of the same year, and upon his surrendering his property without the concurrence of any creditor.
In the opinion delivered by the late Chief Justice Marshall, a broad and well defined distinction was made between the contract and the remedy for the enforcement of that contract; and the court held that while the remedy to enforce the obligation of a contract might be modified as the wisdom of the legislature should direct, yet the constitution intended to restore and preserve public confidence completely, by establishing the great principle that the obligation of contracts should be inviolable. And all experience, even if this had been necessary to an understanding of the subject, hath shown that the framers of the constitution acted wisely in incorporating this prohibitory clause in that instrument, and that its expounders merit the gratitude of the nation for having had the firmness to give to it such a construction as affords an ample remedy for the consequences which must otherwise result from the temporary expedients of legislators. The supreme court admitted in this case, that the states might by law discharge debtors from imprisonment, and that they might pass statutes of limitation, because these relate only to the remedy affecting only the means of coercion, while the obligation of the con
The supreme court of Indiana, 1 Blackford’s Rep., 220, in Lewis v. Breckenridge, following the current of decisions,
It is clear, therefore, that the plea of tender was bad, and that payment can be made in only that which might been legally tendered in payment of debts, November 4, 1845.
Judgment below affirmed with costs.