Political Theory

Re: Unenforceable contracts

Lyle D. Riggs — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:33:21 GMT

The really scarry part of those court decisions was and is the implication that all contracts are ultimately enforceable by the courts, which is part of the state. In other words, no contracts are really private matters. Since all contracts are public matters, the state can reshape them to whatever is prevailing public policy.

Re: Unenforceable contracts

Deist — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:32:35 GMT

Everything I stated above is wrong. Racially Restrictive Covenants are legitimate but they were overly prevelant due to the government locking down on the market once again! Below is the reason why with a link, please read.

This article mentions that 32 states adopted licensing laws for realtors that forbad the selling of real estate to non whites in white areas and if they did they would revoke their license and could not sell legally. This meant that developers could not sell and hope to be racially neutral:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~wplotkin/DeedsWeb/newberry.html

This link also shows the racially restrictive covenant that the Chicago Real Estate Board (local licensing authority for Chicago realtors) and the Chicago Plan Commission (a sometimes quasi-public to fully public zonning board) was able to enact onto the few residential areas it allowed, empowered by the realtors licensing laws. The up side is that there was an expiration date (as in many restrictive covenants) set in 1949.

The Supreme Court in 1917 ruled that outright zoning of racial districts violated the Fourteenth amendment but due to the Courts failure of oversight in state and local licensing laws and the subtle manipulation of zoning laws that were on their face racially neutral (as in the Chicago Plan Commission) racial segragation as mentioned above prevailed.

Re: Unenforceable contracts

Deist — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:53:25 GMT

Also to my knowledge Restrictive covnenats are usually meant to govern the use of the land not who owns it. For instance to make sure that no commercial buildings are built in a residential area but unlike zoning law it is done by private agreement.

Unenforceable contracts

Deist — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:46:27 GMT

I was reading about a 1948 United States Supreme Court case that did not allow state courts to enforce race based restrictive covenants against willing sellers (white) and willing buyers (black). The other members whose properties were also under the restrictive convenant used state courts to submit an injunction against the sale.

The Supreme Court said that these racially restrictive covenants could be voluntarily followed but if there is a willing buyer and willing seller the courts would view the contract as unenforceable due to a violation of the fourteenth amendment since the enforcement of the covenant relied not on the willingness of the owner selling the property but exclusively on the state courts.

Many libertarians have a problem with that ruling and not just on the gounds of federalism. But As I was thinking about it how is this decision to make this contract unenforceable any different from the older common law doctrine of not enforcing agreements in restraint of trade that predated the modern silliness of Antitrust law? Under that rule people could voluntarily agree to industry wide price hikes but that did not last since the courts would not enforce the agreements against people that failed to follow it and who got more market share from the cheaper prices.