Legal relationship

“ When we speak of a compact in a legal sense, we naturally include in it the notion of distinct contracting parties, having mutual rights, and remedies to enforce the obligations arising therefrom. We suppose, that each party has an equal and independent capacity to enter into the contract, and has an equal right to judge of its terms, to enforce its obligations, and to insist upon redress for any violation of them. ”

“ In the first place, obligations are merely one class of duties, namely those which are the correlatives of rights in personam. An obligation is the vinculum juris, or bond of legal necessity, which binds together two or more determinate individuals. ”

“ They are entitled to the protection of all courts, in the enjoyment of what is granted, and to their aid in enforcing the performance of what has been stipulated to be done, and where either party can rightfully call on a court of law or equity to compel the other to perform an act necessary to the execution of the contract, and the judgment or decree of the court would be given in his favor, a voluntary performance of the legal or equitable obligation would be equally valid. ”

“ Under matured systems of jurisprudence a great variety of agreements are denied legal recognition, on the ground that their performance would involve a violation of law, or would be incompatible with good morals or public policy. ”

“ Wherever, by either the common law or the statute law of a State, a right of action has become fixed and a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued in any court which has jurisdiction of such matters and can obtain jurisdiction of the parties. ”

“ XL. We come now to consider the domestic or family relations, which are purely of legal institution. It is to these in effect, that both kinds of domestic conditions, considered as the work of law, are indebted for their origin. When the law, no matter for what purpose, takes upon itself to operate, in a matter in which it has not operated before, it can only be by imposing obligation. Now when a legal obligation is imposed on any man, there are but two ways in which it can in the first instance be enforced. ”

“ Certainly, it ought not to be possible for men and women to assume the solemn obligation of marriage in one State, under one set of legal conditions, and one or the other party to the contract throw off those obligations in another State, under another set of legal conditions. ”

“ Custom which does not fulfil all the requirements hitherto considered by us does not necessarily fail of all legal effect. It cannot, indeed, operate as a source of law by virtue of its own inherent authority. Yet it may nevertheless become legally operative by being incorporated into agreements, through the tacit consent of those who make them. ”

“ This remedy is one which has fallen into disuse in modern practice, and is unfamiliar to the profession; but it was, as we find from an examination of the books, allowed generally, when more than one person was interested jointly in a cause of action or other proceeding, and one of them refused to participate in the legal assertion of the joint rights involved in the matter. ”

“ At all events,there is an important class of cases in which equity, rightly or wrongly, gives relief to the party in whom the legal right created by the contract is vested, though, confessedly, such party could not recover in an action at law. ”

“ Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the visitation and superintendence of a college and the appointment of its officers, may surely be vested rights, to all legal intents, as completely as the right to possess property. ”

“ Legal or equitable rights, acquired under either system of laws, may be enforced in any court of either sovereignty competent to hear and determine such kind of rights and not restrained by its constitution in the exercise of such jurisdiction. ”

“ Legal tribunals have also powerfully assisted to shape and modify conceptions of proprietary right by means of the distinction between Law and Equity, which always makes its first appearance as a distinction between jurisdictions. ”

“ There must be a litigation upon actual transactions between real parties, growing out of a controversy affecting legal or equitable rights as to person or property. All questions of law arising in such cases are judicially determinable. ”

“ Men reared to consider their word equal to the most binding [200] legal contract ever made, would naturally find it difficult to realize, when entering civil life, that something else is considered necessary. ”

“ The power of the federal courts to enforce the terms of private agreements is at all times exercised subject to the restrictions and limitations of the public policy of the United States as manifested in the Constitution, treaties, federal statutes, and applicable legal precedents. ”

“ It is not sufficient, as shown by the cases cited, to call forth the equitable interposition of the court, that the legal obligation under the contracts to do the specific thing desired may be perfect. ”

“ Reverting, for example, to the subject powers, it might be difficult at first glance to discover any essential and fundamental similarity between conditional sales of personalty, escrow transactions, option agreements, agency relations, powers of appointment, etc. But if all these relations are reduced to their lowest generic terms, the conceptions of legal power and legal liability are seen to be dominantly, though not exclusively, applicable throughout the series. ”

“ It is not a formal instrument, employing technical language with well-ascertained legal effect, like a deed or a bill of lading, or framed with precision and nicety as to the choice of phrases to express a certain and definite covenant which the parties, duly advised, have entered into with deliberation and in solemn form. ”

“ The general principle that a party must raise his own legal rights and interests and not those of third parties, and the limited exceptions to that principle, are part of the same set of standing requirements devised by this Court to limit the category of parties who may seek relief in federal court. ”

“ But this objection cannot apply where the first issue is in chancery, and parties collaterally interested are made parties to the litigation, that it may be final, and not because they were legal parties to the original contract on which the litigation is founded. ”

“ We are presented in this case with an apparent conflict or antinomy between two rights that are equally regarded by the law—the right of the plaintiffs to be protected in the legitimate exercise of their trade, and the right of the defendants to carry on their business as seems best to them, provided they commit no wrong to others. ”

“ One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract. ”

“ The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age. ”

“ But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in America, even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than doing now. ”

“ The error of the learned court consisted in overlooking the fact that the doctrine of relation is a fiction of law adopted by the courts solely for the purposes of justice, and is only applied for the security and protection of persons who stand in some privity with the party that initiated proceedings for the land, and acquired the equitable claim or right to the title. ”

“ It is rather to be leemed an institution of society founded upon consent and contract of the parties, and in this view it has some peculiarities in its nature, character, operation, and extent of obligation different from what belong to ordinary contracts.' Section 108n.. ”

“ By what reasons, then, is the law induced to allow this far-reaching operation to the fact of agreement? Why should the mere consent of the parties be permitted in this manner to stand for a title of right? Are not rights the subject-matter of justice, and is justice a mere matter of convention varying with the wills of men? ”

“ The protection, of which it is the business of jurisprudence to find out and to describe the means, is that which is required by one member of the community against the other members. The members of the community, each of whom endeavours to have as much as possible of the objects of desire, will be disposed to take those objects one from another ”

“ No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not by the spirit. ”

“ Upon the Constitution, upon the pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this country and in England, I have argued that this House is bound to revive the Petition under debate. ”

“ A grave conflict of interest can arise out of an agreement between a lawyer and an accused giving the lawyer the right to publish books, plays, articles, interviews, pictures, or related literary rights concerning the case. ”

“ Under the common law,—which is the established and recognized rule of action in all of our States in the absence of a local statute by which a different rule is established,—a valid marriage is nothing more than a civil contract entered into between two persons capable of making contracts. ”

“ He has shown that the right to contract is not conferred by society, but is a natural original right, brought by each individual into society; and that the obligation of contracts is not the result of positive law, but is intrinsic, and is conferred by the act of the parties. ”

“ They have the right to pass across, and the right to pass over the streets of the cities; and in estimating the proof for the plaintiff and the defendant in this case, it is your duty to look upon the relations of each to the other, and the rights of one citizen with another in a common enjoyment and a common right, and answer, yourselves, the question, Have these relative rights been offended in this case, as made manifest by the proof? ”

“ Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. [2] The corporation sole — a creature of ecclesiastical law — is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases. [3] The ordinary corporation is a "person" for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, [p743] whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes. [4]
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. ”

“ The doctrine of the common law has, however, been greatly modified in most of the States by legislation, and the extent to which a married woman may contract, and the manner in which her contracts shall be authenticated and enforced, are definitely prescribed. ”

“ Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. ”

“ The law we are in search of, which is to decide upon the nature, interpretation, and validity of the engagement in question, is that which the parties have, either expressly or presumptively, incorporated into their contract as constituting its obligation. ”

“ The courts in England, as already intimated, consistently maintain the right of individuals, when contracting with each other, to estimate the value of property, or otherwise determine the quantum of damages for a breach of an agreement, where the damage is of an uncertain nature. ”

“ Justice Field, in The Moses Taylor, said: 'That clause only saves to suitors 'the right of a common-law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it.' It is not a remedy in the common-law courts which is saved, but a common-law remedy. ”

“ If one or the other must give way, good sense unhesitatingly requires that justice and positive rights, founded both on valid statutes and valid contracts, should not be sacrificed to mere questions of mode and form. ”

“ If the man and woman agree to take each a portion of land, and not to interfere with one another, 21that agreement is a kind of law; and, in proportion as it is observed, the property of each will be secure. The same plan is pursued by their descendants till they become too numerous to make a mere agreement a sufficient security. They then agree upon an express law, sanctioned by certain punishments, which once more secure to each the possession of what has now become his property by common consent. ”

“ In this case the rights of the individual have no proper limitation beyond the obligations under which he is laid, in consequence either of the rights conferred upon others, or of the means which are thought necessary for protecting them. ”

“ Not so with marriage. The relation once formed, the law steps in and holds the parties to various obligations and liabilities. It is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.' 125 U.S. 210, 31 L. ed. ”

“ The rights acquired by the other contracting party are those of having perpetual succession, of suing and being sued, of purchasing lands for the benefit of themselves and their successors, and of having a common seal, and of making by-laws. ”

“ Whatever rule, therefore, is freely agreed upon by two or more persons as defining their mutual rights and obligations may be 122confidently accepted by the law courts as a true and just rule between those who have so consented to it. ”