Ellingburg v. United States · ¶35

Justice Chase's account implied that the Clauses did not apply to other kinds of retroactive laws. First, on his view, the Clauses did not touch private law. Justice Chase did “not think” that the Ex Post Facto Clause “was inserted to Secure the citizen in his private rights, of either property, or contracts.” Id., at 390. Accordingly, the Clauses would not prohibit a law that retroactively paused a debtor's obligations to a creditor or voided a contract. Such laws, in Justice Chase's view, were governed by separate constitutional prohibitions on impairing the obligations of contracts and making anything but gold or silver a tender in payments of debts. Ibid.; see Art. I, § 10, cl. 1. Second, because the Clauses were meant as protections against the government, they did not apply to laws that retroactively made a law more lenient. They would not, for example, forbid a law that…

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