supplying the obligation of contracts. Originally, the
predominating opinion was negative, since as we have just seen, this law
does not really come into operation until the contract has been broken.
Yet it is obvious that the sanction which this law lends to contracts is
extremely important--indeed, indispensable. In due course it became the
accepted doctrine that that part of the law which supplies one party to
a contract with a remedy if the other party does not live up to his
agreement, as authoritatively interpreted, entered into the "obligation
of contracts" in the constitutional sense of this term, and so might not
be altered to the material weakening of existing contracts. In the
court's own words, "Nothing can be more material to the obligation than
the means of enforcement. Without the remedy the contract may, indeed,
in the sense of the law, be said not to exist, and its obligation to
fall within the class of those moral and social duties which depend for
their fulfillment wholly upon the will of the individual. The ideas of
validity and remedy are inseparable, * * *"[1697]

Establishment Of The Rules.--This rule was first definitely
announced in 1843 in the case of Bronson _v._ Kinzie.[1698] Here an
Illinois mortgage giving the mortgagee an unrestricted power of sale in
case of the mortgagor's fault was involved, along with a later act of
the legislature which required mortgaged premises to be sold for not
less than two-thirds of the appraised value, and allowed the mortgagor a
year after the sale to redeem them. It was held that the statute, in
altering the preexisting remedies to such an extent, violated the
constitutional prohibition, and hence was void. The year following a
like ruling was made in the case of McCracken _v._ Hayward[1699] as to a
statutory provision that personal property should not be sold under
execution for less than two-thirds of its appraised value.

Qualifications Of The Rule.--But the rule illustrated by these
cases does not signify that a State may make no changes in its remedial
or procedural law which affect existing contracts. "Provided," the Court
has said, "a substantial or efficacious remedy remains or is given, by
means of which a party can enforce his rights under the contract, the
Legislature may modify or change existing remedies or prescribe new
modes of procedure."[1700] Thus States are constantly remodelling their
judicial systems and modes of practice unembarrassed