Stay Laws

>>> Item number 641, dated 94/05/19 09:43:07 -- ALL 

Date:         Thu, 19 May 1994 09:43:07 EDT
Reply-To:     junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         "Peter D. Junger" <pdj@samsara.law.cwru.edu>
Subject:      Stay Laws in 1813

Subject: Stay Laws in 1813
Message-Id: <SETHW.940519085643@maine.maine.EDU> From: SETHW%MAINE@UICVM.UIC.EDU
To: H-LAW@UICVM.UIC.EDU
Date: Thu, 19 May 94 08:56:43 EDT

When I teach the adoption of the Constitution in my antebellum survey course, I routinely use the stay laws as an example of the causes of the Constitution and generally generate a good discussion among my students. I naively assumed that the Constitution's ban on states changing contracts would be a sufficient prohibition, although I recall hearing once that that was not the case.

Art I, Sect 10. No State shall . . . pass any law . . . impairing the obligation of contracts.

While reading Donald Hickey's very interesting "The War of 1812" [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990], I came across this passage in a description of the ecnomic hardships of the war.

Commodity prices began to sag at the end of 1812 and then dropped precipitously in 1813. In response Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina enacted stay laws to protect debtors.

He cites the appropriate Acts of those states in his footnote.

I have a few questions.

  1. Why didn't Art I Section 10 bar such stay laws?
  2. Are there other stay laws passed at other times after the adoption of the Constitution?
  3. Could a state pass a stay law today?

Fraternally 

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