This is a lot of inside-baseball stuff to me. I don’t see contracts being nullified outside the bankruptcy process, which is as it should be. If you want to get excited about something, how about we start enforcing the Enumerated Powers clause?
Forbes is a business-oriented publication, so I could see this topic being of supreme importance to their readers.
It says the states can’t invalidate contracts. The federal, national government decided they could? Is that what happened?
The glaring, obvious, turd-in-the-punchbowl at the time example was the repudiation of gold-clause contracts in real estate leases, reneging on government gold bonds, the nationalization and/or outlawing posession of monetary gold.
The government actually criminalized a basic element of the periodic table. But, they investigated themselves, and found no wrongdoing.
Obama nullified the General Motors contract with me to pay off loans in the form of corporate bonds that were part of my retirement portfolio
That was not white of him
The Contracts Clause is essential to the survival of free markets. When parties can go to court and demand that the court modify valid contracts because one party changed his mind, or the government, on its own motion decides to rewrite private contracts, we take a quantum leap toward tyranny.
Agreed, along with the 10th amendment.
“I don’t see contracts being nullified outside the bankruptcy process, which is as it should be.”
No? Say I want to contract you to work for me at a rate of $1 per hour, and for some reason you are amenable and agree to the contract. How about then?
How about when family court judges decide to void prenuptial contracts about division of assets because the judge decides on a whim that the contract is “unfair”?
Or how about when a court decides that companies whose employment contracts limited health benefits to spouse and children must now extend those to homosexual partners?