ABSTRACT
Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 36 US 420 in 1837, marked a turning point in the constitutional law of contracts. The change was significant but not fundamental. Chief Justice John Marshall had died nineteen months before Charles River was decided, and his successor, Roger Brooke Taney, appointed by President Andrew Jackson, sought to chart a different constitutional course. That course did modify aspects of Contracts Clause jurisprudence but in a way that late Marshall Court decisions had foreshadowed, and it did not overturn the primary impulse of nineteenth-century constitutional law to protect property rights and economic affairs. The Supreme Court during John Marshall's tenure generally interpreted the Contracts Clause expansively as an absolute bar against state infringement upon vested property rights. As the nineteenth century wore on, rapid economic growth generated mounting pressures for improvements in transportation, finance, and industry. Consequently, Contracts Clause strictures on state modification of contracts that originally facilitated capitalist development became a straitjacket.
