Contract in fraudem legis

The agreement to save the ship and cargo, under the semblance of a condemnation, was not, in itself, an immoral act; it was, as has been truly said, a stratagem which the laws of war would authorise, but it was certainly a fraud upon the resolution of congress, and no principle can be more clear, than that the courts of the United States can furnish no aid in giving efficacy to it... the contract being clearly in fraud of the law, as existing at the time, a law to which, under the circumstances attending it, no just exceptions can be taken, its execution cannot be compelled by the courts of that country, to evade whose laws it was made.