Constitutional Opinion No. 2026-0774
Case Information
- Content Scored
- Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819)
- Source
- Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Reports Vol. 17 (4 Wheaton)
- Author
- Chief Justice John Marshall (opinion of the Court); Washington and Story concurring
- Publication Date
- 1819-02-01
- Content Type
- Judicial Opinion / Legal-Normative Text
- Opinion Issued
- 2026-07-20
- AFCS Version
- 1.0
Holding
The third and cleanest of the vested-rights holdings, and the one that secured the private institution against the state. New Hampshire, seeking to bring a private college under public control, passed 1816 acts converting Dartmouth College into a state-answerable "Dartmouth University." Marshall held the acts void. The college's charter is a contract -- "a franchise... founded upon private property, devoted by its patron to a private charity" -- and the Contract Clause forbids a state to impair the obligation of contracts, including its own grants. A private eleemosynary corporation "is the creature of private benefaction... subject to [its founders'] control... not to the general control of the government"; with such a corporation "it is not competent for the legislature to interfere." Strong, clean alignment on more articles than one: the security of property and enterprise -- the charter founded on private property, and by protecting it the Court secured the private corporation FORM on which colleges, charities, churches, and businesses would build against absorption by the state (Article IX, 84); a structural limit on legislative power, the Contract Clause binding even a state's own grants (Article XVII, 80); the rule of law securing the stability of charters (Article XVIII, 78); and the independence of an educational institution from state capture (Article XIV, 76). The federalism dimension is minor and dismissed: a state legislature is overruled, but for a naked attempt to take over a private institution -- the very evil the Contract Clause names -- with no corruption to correct (unlike Fletcher) and no reserved power at stake. Scored as Legal/Normative text (85/15). Tier 1 nets to 79; the result is 81 -- America First, the cleanest of the vested-rights trio, and eleven points above its same-term sibling McCulloch (0773): power confined when it protects the citizen's institutions, watched when it expands the state's. Principle scored, not result.
It is the judgment of this Court that Opinion No. 2026-0774 is hereby entered into the record, in accordance with the America First Constitutional Standard. The score stands. The reasoning is published. The record is public.