Baldwin v. Hale

Messrs. Hutchins & Wheeler for the plaintiff in error: It is settled that State insolvent laws not operating retrospectively (such being the character of those under which the discharge here pleaded was granted), do not fall within the constitutional prohibition against the violation of contracts. Otherwise such State insolvent laws would not have been held valid and binding as between the citizens of the States enacting them, as they have been ever since Ogden v. Saunders.1 The law, then, under which the discharge here pleaded was granted, possesses all the validity and force which the State of Massachusetts, with uncontrolled power of legislation on the subject and in the absence of any constitutional restraint, could impart to it. We do not suggest that this or any State law relating to property possesses extra-territorial force: the legislative sovereignty of each State is confined to its limits. Beyond these the laws of some other local jurisdiction prevail. The question, then, presented for decision, being not one of constitutional law, but rather of public or international law, we set out with the principle, well settled, that contracts take their legal construction and validity or invalidity from the 'law of the place' to which they belong; including, under this term, both the place of origin and of execution, where they are not the same. We do not find that contracts as such take any attribute from the circumstance that the domicile or allegiance of the contracting parties is different, unless they are alien enemies.