Justices Likely to Eschew Original Meaning in Contracts Clause Case

The U.S. Supreme Court seemed unlikely to breathe new life into the Constitution’s contracts clause despite acknowledgment from nearly everyone in the room-including some of the justices-that the clause is no longer applied as it was originally intended.

The clause is “absolute in its language,” Shay Dvoretzky, of Jones Day, Washington, told the justices during oral argument March 19. No state shall pass a “law impairing the obligations of contracts,” it says. That language should doom a Minnesota law that revokes beneficiary designations in life insurance policies upon divorce, Dvoretzky said. But Dvoretzky acknowledged that the modern interpretation of ...