1 BRENNAN, J., dissenting festly seek to further the legitimate needs of their citizens. The Court's analysis, I submit, fundamentally misconceives the nature of the Contract Clause guarantee. One of the fundamental premises of our popular democracy is that each generation of representatives can and will remain responsive to the needs and desires of those whom they represent. Crucial to this end is the assurance that new legislators will not automatically be bound by the policies and undertakings of earlier days. In accordance with this philosophy, the Framers of our Constitution conceived of the Contract Clause primarily as protection for economic transactions entered into by purely private parties, rather than obligations involving the State itself. See G. Gunther, Constitutional Law 604 (1975); B. Schwartz, A Commentary On the Constitution of the United States, pt. 2, The Rights of Property 274 (1965); B. Wright, The Contract Clause of the Constitution 15-16 (1938).13 The Framers fully recognized that nothing would so jeopardize the legitimacy of a system of government that relies upon the ebbs and flows of politics to "clean out the rascals" than the possibility that those same rascals might perpetuate their policies simply by locking them into binding contracts. Following an early opinion of the Court, however, that 13 One scholar for example, after undertaking extensive research into the history of the Constitutional Convention, concluded that there is no evidence that the Constitution's Framers perceived of the Contract Clause as applicable to public agreements. "[I]t is evident that all of them discussed the clause only in relation to private contracts, i. e., contracts between individuals." B. Wright, The Contract Clause of the Constitution 15 (1938). Moreover, "[a] careful search has failed to unearth any other statements even suggesting that the contract clause was intended to apply to other than private contracts." Id., at 16. Indeed, Professor Wright found that only two antifederalists, neither of whom was a member of the Convention, ever suggested that the Clause would support “a broader meaning" encompassing public contracts, but "their interpretations were denied by members of the Convention, and the denials were not challenged." Ibid. BRENNAN, J., dissenting 431 U.S. took the first step of applying the Contract Clause to public undertakings, Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87 (1810), later decisions attempted to define the reach of the Clause consistently with the demands of our governing processes. The central principle developed by these decisions, beginning at least a century ago, has been that Contract Clause challenges such as that raised by appellant are to be resolved by according unusual deference to the lawmaking authority of state and local governments. Especially when the State acts in furtherance of the variety of broad social interests that came clustered together under the rubric of "police powers," see E. Freund, The Police Power (1904)-in particular, matters of health, safety, and the preservation of natural resources— the decisions of this Court pursued a course of steady return to the intention of the Constitution's Framers by closely circumscribing the scope of the Contract Clause. This theme of judicial self-restraint and its underlying premise that a State always retains the sovereign authority to legislate in behalf of its people was commonly expressed by the doctrine that the Contract Clause will not even recognize efforts of a State to enter into contracts limiting the authority of succeeding legislators to enact laws in behalf of the health, safety, and similar collective interests of the polity 1-in 14 14 Parallel doctrines worked to the same end of freeing the States from contractual duties allegedly imposed by earlier legislators. For example, it has long been held that in applying the Contract Clause to government contracts, every ambiguity and gap is to be strictly construed in behalf of the State. "[I]n grants by the public, nothing passes by implication.” Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420, 546 (1837). "Every reasonable doubt is to be resolved adversely [to the private party claiming under the contract]. Nothing is to be taken as conceded but what is given in unmistakable terms, or by an implication equally clear. The affirmative must be shown. Silence is negation, and doubt is fatal to the claim. This doctrine is vital to the public welfare." Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park, 97 U. S. 659, 666 (1878). Along these lines, it is noteworthy that the state law of New Jersey itself raises serious doubts concerning the reasonableness of appellant's 1 BRENNAN, J., dissenting short, that that State's police power is inalienable by contract. For example, in Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park, 97 U. S. 659 (1878), the Illinois General Assembly granted to a fertilizer company an 1867 corporate charter to run for 50 years. The corporation thereafter invested in a factory and depot on land which it owned within the area designated by the charter. Five years later, the village authorities of Hyde Park adopted an ordinance that rendered the company's charter valueless reliance on the covenant for permanent protection from later laws enacted by the state legislature. In a case involving an alleged impairment of a township's municipal bonds, Hourigan v. North Bergen Township, 113 N. J. L. 143, 149, 172 A. 193, 196 (1934), the State's highest court declared: "It is a well established doctrine that the interdiction of statutes impairing the obligation of contracts does not prevent the state from exercising such powers as are vested in it for the promotion of the common weal, or are necessary for the general good of the public, though contracts entered into between individuals may thereby be affected. This power, which in its various ramifications is known as the police power, is an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort and general welfare of the people, and is paramount to any rights under contracts between individuals. While this power is subject to limitations in certain cases, there is wide discretion on the part of the legislature in determining what is and what is not necessary-a discretion which courts ordinarily will not interfere with." In my view, therefore, appellant should be held to have purchased the Authority's bonds subject to the knowledge that under New Jersey law the State's obligation was conditionally undertaken subject to reasonable future legislative action. The record raises similiar doubts and ambiguities. Thus, State Senator Farley, who chaired the committee that inquired into the status of the Authority's bonds prior to enactment of the covenant, noted: "[W]e well appreciate that . . . we could not impair any obligation such as contracts of bond issues. Likewise, you [Commissioner Clancy of the Port Authority] as a lawyer know that one legislature cannot bind the other involving policy five, ten, or twenty years hence." App. 89a (emphasis supplied). It may well be that appellant subjectively believed that the covenant was unimpeachable under state law. But given the doubts and hesitancies contained in the record, the principles established in earlier cases extending back to John Marshall should require that such "doubt is fatal to [appellant's] claim." Fertilizing Co., supra, at 666. BRENNAN, J., dissenting 431 U.S. by prohibiting the transportation of offal within the village and forbidding the operation of a fertilizer factory within the village confines. This Court nonetheless rejected the contention that the new ordinance offended the Contract Clause: "We cannot doubt that the police power of the State was applicable and adequate to give an effectual remedy [to the nuisance]. That power belonged to the States when the Federal Constitution was adopted. They did not surrender it, and they all have it now. . . . .. Pure air and the comfortable enjoyment of property are as much rights belonging to [the village residents] as the right of possession and occupancy. . "The [company's] charter was a sufficient license until revoked; but we cannot regard it as a contract guaranteeing, in the locality originally selected, exemption for fifty years from the exercise of the police power of the State, however serious the nuisance might become in the future. . . ." Id., at 667, 669, 670. Two years later, this principle of the Contract Clause's subservience to the States' broad lawmaking powers was reasserted in another context. In 1867, the Mississippi Legislature entered into a contract with a company whereby the latter was chartered to operate a lottery within the State "in consideration of a stipulated sum in cash . . . ." The next year the State adopted a constitutional provision abolishing lotteries. The Court once again unhesitantly dismissed a challenge to this provision grounded on the Contract Clause, Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U. S. 814, 817-818 (1880): "Irrevocable grants of property and franchises may be made if they do not impair the supreme authority to make laws for the right government of the State; but no legislature can curtail the power of its successors to make 1 BRENNAN, J., dissenting such laws as they may deem proper in matters of police'. No one denies . . . that [this legislative power] extends to all matters affecting the public health or the public morals." Later cases continued to read the Contract Clause as qualified by the States' powers to legislate for the betterment of their citizens, while further expanding the range of permissible police powers. For example, in Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Goldsboro, 232 U. S. 548 (1914), the State chartered and contracted with the plaintiff railway company to operate rail lines within the State. Pursuant to this contract, the railroad acquired in fee land for use as rights-of-way and similar transportation activities. The Court recognized that the charter was a binding contract, and that the company, in reliance on the agreement, had acquired land which it enjoys as "complete and unqualified" owner. Id., at 556, 558. Yet, the Court brushed aside a constitutional challenge to subsequent ordinances that greatly circumscribed the railroad's activities on its own land: "For it is settled that neither the 'contract' clause nor the 'due process' clause has the effect of overriding the power of the State to establish all regulations that are reasonably necessary to secure the health, safety, good order, comfort, or general welfare of the community; that this power can neither be abdicated nor bargained away, and is inalienable even by express grant; and that all contract and property rights are held subject to its fair exercise." Id., at 558. In perfect conformity with these earlier cases that recognized the States' broad authority to legislate for the welfare of their citizens, New Jersey and New York sought to repeal the 1962 covenant in furtherance of "admittedly important" interests, ante, at 29, in environmental protection, clean air, and safe and efficient transportation facilities. The States' policy of deploying excess tolls for the maintenance and ex |