contract
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 273 U.S. 326 - Sacramento Nav Co v. Salz · 1927Most cited · 466 citing opinions
implied terms
A contract includes, not only the promises set forth in express words, but, in addition, all such implied provisions as are indispensable to effectuate the intention of the parties and as arise from the language of the contract and the circumstances under which it was made.
How the Supreme Court has restated “contract”
Each Supreme Court definition of “contract,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “contract”
Court decisions citing the 5 opinions that defined “contract” — 971 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 6 definitions, chronological · 1850–1927
- 1850·51 U.S. 402 - John Butler Levi Reynolds Junior and William Overfield Late Board of Canal Commissioners of Pennsylvanias v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania[p5]· cited 178×ORIGINAL
A contract is defined to be 'an agreement between two or more persons, upon a sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a particular thing.
general
The contracts designed to be protected by the tenth section of the first article of that instrument are contracts by which perfect rights, certain definite, fixed private rights of property, are vested. These are clearly distinguishable from measures or engagements adopted or undertaken by the body politic or state government for the benefit of all, and from the necessity of the case, and according to universal understanding, to be varied or discontinued as the public good shall require.
Contract Clause
All the elements of a contract met in the transaction,—competent parties, proper subject-matter, sufficient consideration, and consent of minds.
The fundamental idea of a contract is that it requires the assent of two minds. But a lunatic, or a person non compos mentis, has nothing which the law recognizes as a mind, and it would seem, therefore, upon principle, that he cannot make a contract which may have any efficacy as such.
One who makes a contract never can be absolutely certain that he will be able to perform it when the time comes, and the very essence of it is that he takes the risk within the limits of his undertaking... when the scope of the undertaking is fixed, that is merely another way of saying that the contractor takes the risk of the obstacles to that extent.
risk of obstacles