Court Opinion

ID: 9418261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:17:55.938828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:59.469594
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holmes
concurring.
There seems to me nothing in the Thirteenth Amendment or the Revised Statutes that prevents a State from making a breach of contract, as well a reasonable contract for labor as for other matters, a crime and punishing it as such. But impulsive people with little intelligence or foresight may be expected to lay hold of anything that affords a relief from present pain even though it will cause greater trouble by and by. The successive contracts, each for a longer term than the last, are the inevitable, and must be taken to have been the contemplated outcome of the Alabama laws. On this, ground I am inclined to agree that the statutes in question disclose the attempt to maintain service that the Revised Statutes forbid.