Legal History Commons^™

Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …

Commercial Paper In Economic Theory And Legal History, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Commercial-paper played a significant role in antebellum America by partially filling the void resulting from the shortage of gold and silver coinage and the absence of a reliable paper currency. Although most legal historians would agree with this premise, a controversy has arisen in recent years concerning negotiability, that collection of legal rules which greatly enhanced the usefulness of bills of exchange and promissory notes in commerce and finance.

Many scholars believe that negotiability, along with other pre-Civil War legal doctrines, was intended to facilitate the development of a national market system and economic growth. This view typically holds that …