Sec. 10.-Powers Denied to States Cl. 1.-Contracts-Impairment paid, though enacted after insured's death, held not to impair obligation of the contract, or defeat vested rights of beneficiary under a certificate containing provisions that the policy was subject to all the provisions of the act and regulations thereunder then in force or thereafter adopted. Helmholz v. Horst, 294 Fed. 417. Adirondack R. Co. v. New York, 176 U. S. 350. U. S. v. Arredondo, 6 Pet. 733. Laws not violating obligation.-A statute which affects the value of a contract does not necessarily impair its obligation; so long as the obligation to perform remains in force legislation which retroacts on previous contracts and enhances the cost and difficulty of performance or diminishes the value of such performance is constitutional. The State may pass laws which will operate to devest antecedent rights if they do not technically impair the obligation of contracts. The legislature may validate past transactions. A law which gives validity to a void contract can not be said to impair the obligation of such contract. Curtis v. Whitney, 13 Wall. 71. Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386. Leland v. Wilkinson, 10 Pet. 294. Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Pet. 380. See also Hamilton Gaslight Co. v. Hamilton City, 146 U. S. 268. Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 110. Baltimore, etc., R. Co. v. Nesbit, 10 How. 395. Charles River Brdg. v. Warren Brdg., 11 Pet. 420. Freeland v. Williams, 131 U. S. 420. McFaddin v. Evans-Snider-Buel Co., 185 U. S. 513. Gross v. U. S. Mortgage Co., 108 U. S. 477. Ewell v. Daggs, 108 U. S. 149. Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Cushman, 108 U. S. 51. Jackson v. Lamphire, 3 Pet. 280. Vance v. Vance, 108 U. S. 514. Construction in favor of validity of statute.-Laws of Florida 1913, chapter 6421, section 35, imposing additional license fee upon merchants offering coupons, etc., redeemable in premiums, does not unconstitutionally impair contract obligations, it not affecting sales completed before its enactment. Rast v. Van Deman, etc., Co., 240 U. S. 342. See also Pitney v. Washington, 240 U. S. 387. Who may invoke constitutional question.-Where the legal or equitable rights of a party are not in any way touched and he is in no way injured, he can not be heard to complain of the im Sec. 10.-Powers Denied to States Cl. 1.-Contracts-Impairment pairment of the obligation of his contract as a mere abstract proposition. Hooker v. Burr, 194 U. S. 422. See also Walsh v. Columbus, etc., R. Co., 176 U. S. 479. Hagar v. Reclamation Dist., 111 U. S. 701. Williams v. Hagood, 98 U. S. 74. In Board of Liquidation v. Louisiana (179 U. S. 622) the contention that as public bodies charged with the performance of ministerial duties both the board of liquidation and the drainage commission of New Orleans had not the capacity to plead that the provisions of the State constitution impaired the obligations of contracts in violation of the constitutional provision, was held foreclosed by the decision of the State court below. A county court which has incurred indebtedness under legislative sanction is not the party who can raise the question of the constitutionality of a statute so limiting its power of taxation as to impair its power to redeem its obligations. State v. Braxton County Court, 55 S. E. 382, affirmed in Braxton A holder of tax-receivable coupons, who is not a taxpayer, can not maintain a bill in equity against State officers for an injunction restraining the defendants from refusing to accept the coupons in payment of taxes due by any taxpayer to the State. Marye v. Parsons, 114 U. S. 325. A court of equity can not enjoin the enforcement of a municipal ordinance which it is alleged will impair the obligation of a contract at the suit of one who has only an indirect interest therein. Davis, etc., Mfg. Co. v. Los Angeles, 189 U. S. 219. Persons entitled to benefit of guaranty.-The parties to a contract are the ones to complain of a breach, and if they are satisfied with the disposition which has been made of it and of all claims under it a third party has no right to insist that it has been broken. Williams v. Eggleston, 170 U. S. 309. One whose rights are not affected by the period of limitation established by a statute can not be heard to question the constitutionality of such limitation. Pittsburg Steel Co. v. Baltimore Equitable Soc., 226 U. S. 455. An act repealing a law granting rights to a railroad company on condition of its building its road through certain towns, in default of which it should forfeit a certain sum to the State for the benefit of a particular county, does not impair the obligation of any contract right of such county. Maryland v. Baltimore, etc., R. Co., 3 How. 534. Sec. 10.-Powers Denied to States Cl. 1.-Contracts-Impairment Hagar v. Reclamation Dist., 111 U. S. 701. Street railway franchise.-Increased street railway operating costs and decreased net revenues due to war conditions and to an increased wage scale fixed by the National War Labor Board. though rendering unremunerative the street railway fares fixed by municipal franchise ordinances which, by acceptance, became valid contracts, mutually binding for the 25-year term named therein, do not absolve the street railway company from the obligations of its contract so as to justify it in surrendering its franchises and excuse it from giving service at the rates so fixed, especially where it can not be said that, taking all the years of the term together, the contract will prove unremunerative. Columbus R. etc., Co. v. Columbuş, 249 U. S. 399. Burr v. Columbus, 249 U. S. 415. Milwaukee Elec. R., etc. Co. v. Milwaukee, 252 U. S. 100. Incompleted contract.-A statute that has the effect of violating or repudiating an incompleted contract previously made with the State does not impair the obligation of a contract. The obligation remains as before and forms the measure of the contractor's right to recover from the State the damages sustained. Hays v. Seattle, 251 U. S. 233. Imposing conditions on foreign corporations.-State statute requiring corporations incorporated elsewhere to file a copy of their charter with the secretary of state does not impair the obligation of a contract entered into by a corporation on the date the statute was passed, although the statute does not go into operation until a subsequent date. Diamond Glue Co. v. U. S. Glue Co., 187 U. S. 611. See also Bedford v. Eastern Bldg., etc., Assn., 181 U. S. 241. Munday v. Wisconsin Trust Co., 252 U. S. 499. Travis v. Yale, etc., Mfg. Co., 252 U. S. 60 (income tax on salaries of employees). Home Ins. Co. v. Augusta, 93 U. S. 116 (annual license tax). New York, etc., R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 153 U. S. 628 (tax on bonds). Connecticut, etc., Ins. Co. v. Spratley, 172 U. S. 602 (service of process). Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 177 U. S. 28 (forfeiture of permission to do business). National Council v. State Council, 203 U. S. 151 (establishing branch American Smelting, etc., Co. v. Colorado, 204 U. S. 103 (greater Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Swanger, 157 Fed. 783 decrees affirmed in- Sec. 10.-Powers Denied to States Cl. 1.-Contracts-Impairment Curative statutes.-Contracts are not impaired but confirmed by curative statutes. There is nothing in the Constitution which prohibits the legislature of a State or Territory from exercising judicial functions, nor from passing an act which divests rights vested by law provided its effect be not to impair the obligation of a contract. A statute which declares that a deed shall not be adjudged invalid by reason of any defective acknowledgment is valid. Randall v. Kreiger, 23 Wall. 146. Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 109. Impairment vel non in sundry instances-Validating a void contract.-A law which gives validity to a void contract can not be said to impair the obligation of a contract; as where the supreme court of a State has decided that a contract was void so that the principle of law which had been mentioned did not apply, but the legislature afterwards declared that such contracts were valid. Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Pet. 410. Quieting title to real estate does not impair the obligation of any contract. Hamilton v. Brown, 161 U. S. 263. Mode of service of process.-A statute which prescribes a mode of serving judicial process upon a railroad company different from that provided for in its charter is not void as impairing the obligation of a contract. Railroad Co. v. Hecht, 95 U. S. 170. Remedies Legislative control of remedies in general.-While the obligation of a contract may be impaired by striking at the remedy, a violation of the obligation is not necessarily implied from a reasonable change in the mode of enforcing the contract. The remedy for the enforcement of a contract forms a material part of its obligation, and the existence of a remedy is essential to the value of a contract, but the remedy constitutes no part of the contract itself, and may be changed or modified at the will of the legislature, and this power of the legislature is subject only to the restriction that it can not be so exercised as to take away all remedy upon the contract or impose burdens or restrictions which will materially impair its value. Mason v. Haile, 12 Wheat. 370. Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 200. Tennessee v. Sneed, 96 U. S. 74. See also Woodruff v. Trapnall, 10 How. 190. Hawthorne v. Calef, 2 Wall. 10. Walker v. Whitehead, 16 Wall. 314. Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 262. Gunn v. Barry, 15 Wall. 623. Hill v. Merchants' Ins. Co., 134 U. S. 527. Terry v. Anderson, 95 U. S. 637. Sec. 10.-Powers Denied to States Cl. 1.-Contracts--Remedies South Carolina v. Gaillard, 101 U. S. 438. Von Hoffman v. Quincy, 4 Wall. 535. The power of the legislature to regulate the remedy and modes of proceeding in relation to past as well as future contracts is subject only to the restriction that it can not be exercised so as to take away all remedy upon the contract, or to impose upon its enforcement new burdens and restrictions which materially impair the value and benefit of the contract. Tennessee v. Sneed, 96 U. S. 69. Memphis v. U. S., 97 U. S. 293. Oshkosh Waterworks Co. v. Oshkosh, 187 U. S. 437. National Surety Co. v. Architectural Co., 226 U. S. 276. An alteration by law of a remedy to such extent as to materially affect a right vested under a prior contract is unconstitutional. Curran v. Arkansas, 15 How. 304. Though the remedy for the enforcement of a contract may sometimes enter into the contract itself, when an endeavor is made to change the existing remedy, so that no effective and enforceable one is left, if a remedy is left or provided which is fairly sufficient, the obligations of a contract are not impaired by the taking away of the remedies existing when the contract was entered into. Waggoner v. Flack, 188 U. S. 595. A statute may give a remedy not already existing, and this notwithstanding the new remedy may be less convenient or more tardy or difficult. If the remedy given be as good as that taken away no contract obligation is impaired. Freeborn v. Smith, 2 Wall. 175. Mason v. Haile, 12 Wheat. 370. Louisiana v. New Orleans, 102 U. S. 203. A State may give an additional and more summary remedy for breach of contract by mandamus if it does not thereby enlarge the obligation. New Orleans, etc., R. Co. v. Louisiana, 157 U. S. 219. The grant of a new remedy by way of review is valid, and the State may provide for new trials and create new tribunals of |