The court thus simply dispensed the legislature from obedience to the
law, saying in effect, "although the Constitution forbids impairing
contracts, and although this is a contract which you have impaired, yet,
in our discretion, we suspend the operation of the Constitution, in this
instance, by calling your act an exercise of a power unknown to the
framers of the Constitution." I cannot doubt that Marshall would have
flouted this theory had he lived to pass upon it, but Marshall died in
1835, and the Charles River Bridge Case, in which this question was
first presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, did not come
up until 1837. Then Joseph Story, who remained as the representative of
Marshall's philosophy upon the bench, vehemently protested against the
latitudinarianism of Chief Justice Taney and his associates, but without
producing the slightest effect.

In 1785 the Massachusetts legislature chartered the Charles River Bridge
Company to build a bridge between Boston and Charlestown, authorizing
it, by way of consideration, to collect tolls for forty years. In 1792
the franchise was extended to seventy years, when the bridge was to
revert to the Commonwealth. In 1828 the legislature chartered the Warren
Bridge Company, expressly to build a bridge parallel to and practically
adjoining the Charles River Bridge, the Warren Bridge to become a free
bridge after six years. The purpose, of course, was to accelerate
movement by ruining the Charles River Bridge Company. The Charles River
Bridge Company sought to restrain the building of the Warren Bridge as a
breach of contract by the State, but failed to obtain relief in the
state courts, and before the cause could be argued at Washington the
Warren Bridge had become free and had destroyed the value of the Charles
River Bridge, though its franchise had still twenty years to run. As
Story pointed out, no one denied that the charter of the Charles River
Bridge Company was a contract, and, as he insisted, it is only common