Justice Jay, Judge Gushing, and District Judge Henry
Marchant, sitting in the Circuit Court for the- Dis-
trict of Rhode Island, held a law of that State to be
unconstitutional as impairing the obligation of contract, in the case of Alexander Champion and Thomas Dickason V. Silas Casey.[1] The statute involved was an
Act of the Rhode Island General Assembly passed in
February, 1791, in response to a petition of a debtor
for an extension of three years' time in which to settle
his accounts with his creditors and for an exemption
from all arrests and attachments for such term of three years. The decision was as follows: "The
Court also determined in the case of Champion and Dickason against Silas Casey that the Legislature of
a State have no right to make a law to exempt an
individual from arrests and his estate from attachments for his private debts, for any term of time, it
being clearly a law impairing the obligation of con-
tracts, and therefore contrary to the Constitution of
the United States.** Another newspaper stated that :
"The defendant's counsel pleaded a resolution of the
State in bar of the action, by which he was allowed
three years to pay his debts and during which he was
to be free from arrests on that account. The Judges
were unanimously of opinion that, as by the Consti-
tution of the United States, the individual States are
prohibited from making laws which shall impair the
obligation of contracts, and as the resolution in ques-
tion, if operative, would impair the obligation of the
contract in question, therefore it could not be admitted
to bar the action."[2] Though this decision was given
- ↑ This caae has hitherto escaped the notice of legal historians ; the original rec- ords are now on file in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island.
- ↑ For these reports of the decision, see Columbian CenHnd, June 20, 1792; Providence Gazette, June 16, 1702 ; United States Chronicle (Prov.), June 14, 1792 ; Salem
