In contrast, when a contract is void to begin with, there's just no agreement at all. Neither party has power to resurrect a void deal. An innocent party who wants to void a transaction has to give everything back. This is the principle that says you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If she won't repay, she ratified our deal.
Ratification takes a defective contract and transmutes it into a good one.
Even first-year law students know about this stuff, said the employer. That may be, said the justices, but we aren't first-year law students. The Supreme Court disagreed with Entergy, the trial court and the Court of Appeals, primarily on two points. First, the high court said, Entergy's insistence on void and voidable contracts and ratification missed the point completely. Second, the point missed was that Congress told us all exactly how ADEA releases would be done.