Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/250

 242 executed conveys a chose in possession; a contract executory conveys only a chose in action. Since, then, a grant is in fact a contract executed, the obligation of which continues; and since the constitution uses the general term, contract, without distinguishing between those, which are executory and diose, which are executed; it must be construed to comprehend the former, as well as the latter. A state law, therefore, annulling conveyances between individuals, and declaring, that the grantors should stand seized of their former estates, notwithstanding those grants, would be as repugnant to the constitution, as a state law discharging the vendors from the obligation of executing their contracts of sale by conveyances. It would be strange, indeed, if a contract to convey were secured by the constitution, while an absolute conveyance remained unprotected. That the contract, while executory, was obligatory; but when executed, might be avoided.

§ 1371. Contracts, too, are express, or implied. Express contracts are, where the terms of the agreement are openly avowed, and uttered at the time of the making of it. Implied contracts are such, as reason and justice dictate from the nature of the transaction, and which therefore the law presumes, that every man undertakes to perform. The constitution makes no distinction between the one class of contracts and the other. It then equally embraces, and applies to both. Indeed, as by far the largest class of contracts in civil society, in the ordinary transactions of life, are implied, there would be very little object in securing the