Contract Clause
provision in Article I of the U.S. Constitution
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, known as the Contract Clause, imposes certain prohibitions on the states. These prohibitions are meant to protect individuals from intrusion by state governments and to keep the states from intruding on the enumerated powers of the U.S. federal government.
Among other things, this clause prohibits states from issuing their own money and from enacting legislation relieving particular persons of their contractual obligations. Although the clause recognizes people's right to form contracts, it does not prohibit state legislatures to create laws barring contracts offending public policy, such as contracts for sex or for child labor. Likewise, though prohibited from creating a state currency, states are not barred from making "gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts".
Text
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Treaties, alliances, or confederations
At the time of the Civil War, this clause was one of the provisions upon which the Supreme Court relied in holding that the Confederation formed by the seceding States (the States that withdrew from membership in a federal union) could not be recognized as having any legal existence. Today, its practical significance lies in the limitations which it implies upon the power of the States to deal with matters having a bearing upon international relations. In the early case of Holmes v. Jennison, Chief Justice Taney, referencing the Contract Clause, wrote an opinion which found that states had no power under it to honor an extradition request from a foreign government.
“Contract Clause” enters the record as provision in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Contract, Clause and provision can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Contract Clause” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Contract, Clause and provision provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5165650. The Library of Congress control number is n2019008709. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Contract Clause” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.