James Clark McReynolds

“ A contract is an agreement in which a party undertakes to do, or not to do, a particular thing. The law binds him to perform his undertaking, and this is, of course, the obligation of his contract. * * * Any law which releases a part of this obligation must, in the literal sense of the word, impair it. * * * But it is not true that the parties have in view only the property in possession when the contract is formed, or that its obligation does not extend to future acquisitions. Industry, talents, and integrity constitute a fund which is as confidently trusted as property itself. ”

“ Future acquisitions are, therefore, liable for contracts; and to release them from this liability impairs their obligation.'
And in Planters' Bank v. Sharp, 6 How. 327, 12 L. Ed. 447, opinion by Mr. Justice Woodbury:
'One of the tests that a contract has been impaired is that its value has by legislation been diminished. It is not, by the Constitution, to be impaired at all. This is not a question of degree or manner or cause, but of encroaching in any respect on its obligation, dispensing with any part of its force.'
Ogden v. ”

“ So far as the statute of 1914 undertook to exempt the policies and their proceeds from antecedent debts it came into conflict with the federal Constitution. See Lessley v. Phipps, 49 Miss. 790; Johnson v. Fletcher, 54 Miss. 628, 28 Am. Rep. 388; Rice v. Smith, 72 Miss. 42, 16 South. 417; In re Heilbron, 14 Wash. 536, 45 Pac. 153, 35 L. R. A. 602; Skinner v. Holt, 9 S. D. 427, 69 N. W. 595, 62 Am. St. Rep. 878 ”