State Contract Impairment Clauses and the Validity of Chapter 9 Authorization

Chapter 9 requires states to authorize any municipal bankruptcy filing. However, most state constitutions have a provision similar to the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution that prohibits passing any \u27laws impairing the obligations of contracts.\u27 The U.S. Supreme Court has foreclosed the argument that Chapter 9 bankruptcy violates the federal constitution. State courts have generally followed the Court\u27s jurisprudence in interpreting the contract clauses of their own constitution. The Court\u27s jurisprudence, however, is inconsistent with the text, purpose, and origin of the Contract Clause. This Comment argues that state courts should abandon this jurisprudence and adopt a much stricter interpretation of their own clause that is more in line with the Court\u27s earlier decisions. Under this stricter interpretation, states violate their constitutions\u27 contract impairment clauses by authorizing chapter 9 bankruptcy filings, except in the unlikely case that a municipality has no contractual obligations to impair