This provision is certainly one of the most important--perhaps the most important--of all the provisions of the constitution of the United States, as protective of the natural rights of the people to make their own contracts, or provide for their own welfare.
Spooner highlights the importance of a constitutional provision that protects contract rights.
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Any restriction upon the exercise of this right is a restriction upon his rightful power of providing for, and accomplishing, his own well-being.
And whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to…
If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.
Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.