Spencer Heath Archive

Item 859

Verbatim note by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

1955 or 1956?

It is the practice of lawyers and law writers following Blackstone to so construe everything as to justify the kingly, the political, the statutory power. Accordingly, instead of adhering to the precise and correct definition of contract, as agreement among persons through the voluntary meeting and continued agreement of their minds, they have invented various kinds of (shall I say it) bastard contracts (for some inclusive term), quasi-contracts, “constructive contracts,” contracts “by intendment of law,” all of which they call contracts but are not truly contracts because of the importation of legal coercive and compulsive elements in some manner or degree.