Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Case, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression

In the depths of the Great Depression, when foreclosure rates skyrocketed across the United States, more than two dozen states passed mortgage-extension or -adjustment laws to help farmers and homeowners keep their properties. One such statute in Minnesota led to the most important property law case of its time and still casts a long shadow upon constitutional debates and our own era's severe economic downturn.

Fighting Foreclosure marks the first book-length study of the landmark 1934 Supre...