all contracts, executed and executory, whether between individuals or a state and individuals. Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 1; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 582; Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U. S. 750. It is only those contracts in existence when the hostile law is passed that are protected; the states may legislate as to contracts thereafter made as they see fit. Denny v. Bennett, 128 U. S. 489. A state statute can not be held to be unconstitutional merely on the ground that it divests a right previously vested; the clause extends only to vested rights which arise out of and have their origin in contract. Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Pet. 380; Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 110; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420. The Supreme Court is specially charged with the high duty to take care that the prohibition against states impairing the obligation of contracts shall neither be evaded nor frittered away. Murphy v. Charleston, 96 U. S. 432.

§ 222. The Fifth Amendment. On the heels of the contract clause came the Fifth Amendment, promoting the development of the idea of vested rights by introducing into our Federal Constitution, for the first time, the guaranty of due process in the provision that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." That safeguard was amplified by other provisions guaranteeing trial by jury, and forbidding double jeopardy, self incrimination, and the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. But the guaranties thus introduced by that amendment were not prohibitions operating on the states; they were simply limitations upon the powers of the Federal Government itself. "The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred upon this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms,

are naturally, and, we think, necessarily applicable to the government created by this instrument." Barron v. Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243. See also, Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 123; Kelly v. Pittsburgh, 104 U. S. 78; Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, 164 U. S. 112.

§ 223. The great vacuum to be filled. From what has just been said it appears that while the states were forbidden by the contract clause to impair the obligation of contracts, they were not forbidden by the Fifth Amendment to deprive private persons of due process of law, as there was no prohibition against retrospective state legislation. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the states were at liberty to pass laws depriving private persons of due process of law; the only security such persons possessed in proceedings by the state had to be found, if at all, in its constitution and laws. At the time in question the power of the states to pass retrospective laws, not ex post facto nor impairing the obligation of contracts, was clearly recognized (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518; Baltimore, etc., R. Co. v. Nesbit, 10 How. 395), even when such laws divested rights of property antecedently vested (Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 110). See also, Carpenter v. Pennsylvania, 17 How. 463; Bissell v. Jeffersonville, 24 How. 296; Beloit v. Morgan, 7 Wall. 624; Drehman v. Stifle, 8 Wall. 603; St. Joseph Township v. Rogers, 16 Wall. 663; Ewell v. Daggs, 108 U. S. 157; Williams v. Paine, 169 U. S. 79).

§ 224. The Fourteenth Amendment. To fill the vacuum just described was adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, the capstone of the Constitution, which while it does not prohibit retrospective laws as such (League v. Texas, 184 U. S. 156) does forbid all arbitrary interference with fundamental rights, including vested rights of property, regardless of the source, contractual or otherwise, from which such vested rights emanated. It was therefore held

in Bradley v. Lightcap, 195 U. S. 1, that a law, divesting a right vested under a contract, thus impairing its obligation by working a deprivation of a right of property, is offensive to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In that case the Court said: "Accepting the construction of the act by the state court, and its conclusion that it applies to Mrs. Bradley, then the question is whether such a statute so applied does not impair the obligation of the contract previously existing between the mortgagee and the mortgagor, or deprive the mortgagee of property rights without due process? That question was raised in the Supreme Court of Illinois, and the court held that it did not. 201 Ill. 511. Confessedly, subsequent laws which in their operation amount to the denial of rights accruing by a prior contract are obnoxious to constitutional objections. As we have said, when Mrs. Bradley took this mortgage there was no statutory limitation as to the time within which a master's deed must be taken out, and no loss of right by reason of failure to do so was prescribed. After she had filed her bill, and while she was in possession, the act of 1872 went into effect, and, it may be conceded, limited Mrs. Bradley's right to obtaining a deed on foreclosure sale, and so far affected any remedy through a deed she might have had. But, reading the act, as the view of the supreme court compels us to do, as taking away her right to maintain her possession, we are of opinion that it materially impairs the obligation of her contract, and deprives her of property without due process of law."

§ 225. What constitutes a vested right. In Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, it was held that a right vested in a citizen means that he has the power to do certain acts, or to possess certain things, according to the law of the land. Speaking of vested rights of property, Mr. Justice Chase said in that case: "If anyone has a right of property such a right is a perfect and exclusive right; but no one can have such right, before he acquired a better right to

the property than any other person in the world." In Sim's Lessee v. Irvine, 3 Dall. 425, it was held that a legal right once established and incorporated as such with property and tenures, notwithstanding any new distribution of judicial powers, must be treated as such by the courts. In Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, it was held that where a law is in its nature a contract, and absolute rights have vested under it, a repeal of such law can not divest such rights. See also, Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270. In Frisbie v. Whitney, 9 Wall. 187, it was held that when all the precedent conditions prescribed by the preemption laws, including the payment of the price of the land, have been satisfied by the settler, he, for the first time, acquires a vested interest in the premises occupied by him, of which he can not be subsequently divested. In Pearsall v. Great Northern R. Co., 161 U. S. 673, the Court said: "A 'vested right' is defined by Fearne in his work upon Contingent Remainders, as 'an immediate, fixed right of present or future enjoyment;' and by Chancellor Kent as 'an immediate right of present enjoyment, or a present fixed right of future enjoyment' 4 Kent., Com. 202." Cooley, Const. Law, 332, in drawing the distinction between vested and expectant rights, has said that "rights are vested, in contradistinction to being expectant or contingent. They are vested when the right to enjoyment, present or prospective, has become the property of some particular person or persons, as a present interest. They are expectant when they depend upon the continued existence of the present condition of things until the happening of some future event. They are contingent when they are only to come into existence on an event or condition which may not happen or be performed until some other event may prevent their vesting." "Accepting the words, in accordance with convenience and settled usage, as synonymous with rights protected by the law of the land or due process of law, the essential qualities of a vested right are that it must be a fundamental right, which is concerned with substance as con

trasted with form, and it must be complete and perfect in a definite person, either over particular things (vested right of property) or enforceable in favor of definite persons whenever in the future conditions already determined arise (vested personal rights)." McGehee, p. 144-5.

In Arnett v. Reade, 220 U. S. 311, it was held that the husband had no vested rights in the community property acquired prior to the New Mexico law of 1901, of which he would be deprived by the application to such property of a certain section of that law. The Court said: "We should require more than a reference to Randall v. Krieger, 23 Wall. 137, as to the power of the legislature over an inchoate right of dower, to make us believe that a law could put an end to her interest without compensation consistently with the Constitution of the United States." In Gritts v. Fisher, 224 U. S. 640, it was held that members of the Cherokee tribe living on September 1, 1902, and enrolled under the act of July 1, 1902, were not deprived of their vested rights to participate in the allotment and distribution of the remaining tribal lands and funds-their individual allotments not being affected by the provision of the act of April 26, 1906, admitting newly born members of the tribe to the allotment and distribution from which they were excluded by the earlier act, if born after September 1, 1902. See also as to vested right to exemption from state taxation, protected by the Federal Constitution against abrogation by Congress during a given period, English v. Richardson, 224 U. S. 680; Choate v. Trapp, 224 U. S. 665. In Willoughby v. City of Chicago, 235 U. S. 45, it was held that by the overruling of earlier decisions so as to render real property liable for an assessment for the benefits resulting from the widening of a street, after the damages for the part taken have been fixed by judgment in due form, no vested rights of the owners of such property can be said to be interfered with.