ses on the laws of nature and nations have
guided public opinion on the subjects of obligation and contract," and
that they took their views on these subjects from those sources. He also
posed the question of what would happen to the obligation of contracts
clause if States might pass acts declaring that all contracts made
subsequently thereto should be subject to legislative control.[1696]

For the first and only time majority of the Court abandoned the Chief
Justice's leadership. Speaking by Justice Washington it held that the
obligation of private contracts is derived from the municipal law--State
statutes and judicial decisions--and that the inhibition of article I,
section 10, is confined to legislative acts made after the contracts
affected by them, with one exception. For by a curiously complicated
line of reasoning it was also held in this same case that when the
creditor is a nonresident, then a State may not by an insolvent law
rights under a contract, albeit one of later date.

With the proposition established that the obligation of a private
contract comes from the _municipal_ law in existence when the contract
is made, a further question presents itself, namely, what part of the
municipal law is referred to? No doubt, the law which determines the
validity of the contract itself is a part of such law. Also, the law
which interprets the terms used in the contract, or which supplies
certain terms when others are used; as for instance, constitutional
provisions or statutes which determine what is "legal tender" for the
payment of debts; or judicial decisions which construe the term "for
value received" as used in a promissory note, and so on. In short, any
law which at the time of the making of a contract goes to measure the
rights and duties of the parties to it in relation to each other enters
into its obligation.

Remedy a Part of the Obligation

Suppose, 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 furnished him by the
remedial law, including the law of procedure. In the case of a mortgage,
he may foreclose; in the case of a promissory note, he may sue; in
certain cases, he may demand specific performance. Hence the further
question arises, whether this remedial law is to be considered a part of
the law