(no subject)
I occasionally like to read about constitutional law. I read cases on a website called Justia on supreme.justia.com. I learned about a former associate justice named Stephen Johnson Field after reading his dissenting opinion in LEGAL TENDER CASES, 79 U.S. 457. Regarding the power to coin money, which has been so loosely interpreted today for the sake of allowing what should have required an amendment, he said: To coin money is to mould metallic substances having intrinsic value into certain forms convenient for commerce, and to impress them with the stamp of the government indicating their value. Coins are pieces of metal of definite weight and value thus stamped by national authority. Such is the natural import of the terms "to coin money" and "coin," and if there were any doubt that this is their meaning in the Constitution, it would be removed by the language which immediately follows the grant of the "power to coin," authorizing Congress to regulate the value of the money thus coined, and also "of foreign coin," and by the distinction made in other clauses between coin and the obligations of the general government and of the several states. [...] The inhibition upon the states to coin money and yet to make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts must be read in connection with the grant of the coinage power to Congress. Further in his dissent, he quotes the Federalist papers showing James Madison responding to a dissent by asking if removing the legal tender status of the "bills of credit" the U.S. can emit would be sufficient. The concurrence of the convention to prohibit paper as a type of compulsory payment was almost unanimous.