handing it down. Justice Chase, indeed, even
went so far as to suggest, as a sort of stop-gap to the breach they were
thus creating in the Constitution, the idea that, even in the absence of
written constitutional restrictions, the Social Compact as well as
"the principles of our free republican governments" afforded judicially
enforcible limitations upon legislative power in favor of private
rights. Then, in the years immediately following, several state courts,
building upon this dictum, had definitely announced their intention
of treating as void all legislation which they found unduly to disturb
vested rights, especially if it was confined in its operation to
specified parties. *

* In connection with this paragraph, see the writer's article
entitled "The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law," in
the "Michigan Law Review," February, 1914. Marshall once wrote Story
regarding his attitude toward Section X in 1787, as follows: "The
questions which were perpetually recurring in the State legislatures
and which brought annually into doubt principles which I thought most
sacred, which proved that everything was afloat, and that we had no safe
anchorage ground, gave a high value in my estimation to that article of
the Constitution which imposes restrictions on the States." "Discourse."

Such was still the situation when the case of Fletcher vs. Peck * in
1810 raised before the Supreme Court the question whether the Georgia
Legislature had the right to rescind a land grant made by a preceding
Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed
of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first
place, it was palpably a moot case; that is to say, it was to the
interest of the opposing parties to have the rescinding act set aside.
The Court would not today take jurisdiction of such a case, but Marshall
does not even suggest such a solution of the question, though Justice
Johnson does in his concurring opinion. In the second place, Georgia's
own claim to the lands had been most questionable, and consequently her
right to grant them to others was equally dubious; but this, too, is
an issue which Marshall avoids. Finally, the grant had been procured by
corrupt means, but Marshall ruled that this was not a subject the Court
might enter upon; and for the ordinary run of cases in which undue
influence is alleged to have induced the enactment of a law, the ruling
is clearly sound. B