The most notable were the prohibitions against ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts.26 But these provisions hardly provided a foothold for attacking the special privileges accorded to the butchers of the Crescent City Company.

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.

Madison vigorously defends the outlawing of bills of attainder, ex post facto laws and laws impairing the obligations of contracts.

No laws impairing the obligation of contracts shall be enacted.

To the Editor: Re "The Divorce Debate" (editorial, Feb. 15): Nowhere do you mention the constitutional prohibition of laws "impairing the obligation of contracts," found in Article 1, Section 10.

In Hepburn v. Griswold, the Supreme Court had found the legal tender laws inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which prohibited the states from passing "any ... law impairing the obligation of contracts."

Article I, Section 10, prohibits any "law impairing the obligation of contracts."

James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 44 that "laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation."

It hinged on whether Congress had exclusive power to pass bankruptcy laws, which itself depended on what was meant by the clause prohibiting states from passing laws impairing the "obligations of contracts."

It is odd, therefore, that a law impairing human rights is now suddenly being devised.