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8 Current Legal Thought 150 (1941-1942)
Impossibility of Performance of Contracts due to War-Time Governmental Interference

handle is hein.journals/curletho8 and id is 156 raw text is: CURRENT LEGAL THOUGHT foreclosures and all other general limitation periods prescribed by law, statutory or otherwise. As a final word, it may be suggested that the fundamental remedial purpose of the Act should be reasserted. The Act is designed to give relief to soldiers and sailors, as its title indicates. Why then should doubtful questions be resolved against these men? If the Act is in- tended to generate a high morale in the armed forces of the nation, the courts should be eager to construe its provisions as liberally as is judicially possible. IMPOSSIBILITY OF PERFORMANCE OF CONTRACTS DUE TO WAR-TIME GOVERNMENTAL INTERFERENCE by K. V. R. TOWNSEND I Abstracted from 28 VIRGINIA LAw REVIEW 72, NOVEMBER 1941 T HE ordinary contract relations between producers and consumers are today subject to varying degrees of disturbance as a result of governmental action designed to turn the United States into an arsenal for the democracies. Hardly an article of commerce exists which will not be affected by the measures now being taken in Washington to assure the production of essentials and the curtailment of non-essentials. Litigation will undoubtedly follow, and the courts will once more have to contend with the application of the doctrine of impossibility of performance to contracts affected directly and indirectly by governmental regulations. The doctrine of the discharge of contract obligations because of impossibility, a product of commercial necessity, has been the subject of much confused judicial thinking, and in the attempt to explain and define the doctrine in terms with which the legal profession was already familiar, the courts have developed several conflicting theories. There is even greater confusion as to the application of the doctrine to con- tracts affected by war. The opportunity afforded the courts by the World War to lay down a general rule applicable to cases arising be- cause of such wars was conveniently passed over for the most part, jurists apparently being capable of that same wishful thinking charac- teristic of the statesmen of the period, who considered the 1914-18 conflagration as that non-existent war to end all wars. Prohibition The clearest situation for the application of the impossibility doc- trine is found where the government prohibits one party from per- forming the contract. Here impossibility is really illegality; and it is a general rule of law that one is excused from performing a contract 1 Member of the Editorial Board, Virginia Law Review. 150

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