 In performance contracts, there are definable or deliverable results to be accomplished by the parties. There are contract results that define accomplishment. It is contrasted to service contracts by commitment of legal consideration to gain that result instead of a parting to the contract doing some promised activity. The performance focus is on the result rather than the actions that the parties undertake to gain it. Having that prescribed result defines a simplified area of tort law. The result is either gained or not gained. And when one party does their part, but the result is not accomplished when the other party refuses, we have an extremely well defined wrong. A tort action on that wrong is fairly well established by the contract itself. The simplest of all performance contracts are those in barter or sales. These are in the form of if this party gives a valued item or money, the other agrees to give another valued item or money in return. Such contracts are only reduced to signed writings for major purchases. Food and other supplies are generally offered publicly for a price and offer of money accepts the price both setting the contract into existence and arranging immediate performance. Consider Robert's contract with the post office when it comes to delivery of mail. The price is agreed and his letter is accepted for delivery without any written contract being signed. Yet the responsibility is clear and the post office becomes the agent for delivery of the item of mail. There is a defined result, the delivery to the indicated recipient, and the delivery will define whether the contract has been successfully completed. On delivery of his letter, the contract is complete and fully executed. It is such a common method of commerce that the post office sells tokens of valued stamps that can be attached to the mail to indicate satisfactory delivery to the post office and the post office will cancel those tokens as an indication of acceptance for delivery. That contract is highly formalized with close descriptions of what the postal service will and will not accept responsibility for as to delivery. That is part of the contract offered to deliver. A special contract matter, the laws supporting the post office recognize the postal system as the legal agent for the delivery of accepted mail items. Once accepted, it is normally considered as having been legally delivered to the receiver. The trust relation is given legal effect. It takes a separate provision in a legal agreement to require postal delivery at the place addressed. It is common for billing or other goods and services to indicate the date at which a mailed item must be accepted by the post office as the time for acceptable payment. Most of the challenges in sales contracts come from mistakes by one party in the value of what they offer. The breach is refusal to perform after the other party acts to accept the bargain. It can be a mistaken price, say $1.50 where the intended price is $150. It is then that the question of tort arises. There have also been a number of class action applications based on discrimination. It is seen in real estate business a refusal to sell homes in some neighborhood to black citizens. Implementation in these areas has generally been supported by legislation as challenges tend to be culturally indeterminate. The officers of the court might not otherwise address historically permitted social discrimination as a legal wrong. This is approached as a matter of justice. The constitutional challenge is one of representing the understanding of justice by some people as being enforceable over the understanding of justice by others. Our government is to represent we the people not to take sides of some people in their quarrel against others. Government is authorized to act where there is a general recognition of justice by we the people as a body. It is not authorized to act until there is such an agreement that it is the will of the people that is being implemented. Legislation should be used to implement the understanding of we the people rather than to attempt to change what they accept through an act of legislation. The basis for action is far less clear where discrimination is on a personal basis as in a refusal to sign a contract with people of a certain ethnic background. Setting a signature to a document is a most personal decision. The citizen can pick and choose who he or she trusts to keep faith, and that personal decision is sovereign. There is no right in any citizen to demand that some other citizen sign a contract document with someone they do not trust. And accordingly, this sort of direction cannot be required by government under authority of we the people. The people do not have that privilege or authority over their neighbor's personal actions and cannot give the right to representative government. Personal actions other than torts and crimes are not to be a matter for regulatory legislation. Maintaining a public establishment of refusing parts of the public as customers can be addressed as improper but should only be accepted as a legal wrong where we the people are the ones who find it unacceptable. The actions of our courts have been abusive due to the general government refusal to recognize the ultimate sovereignty of citizens. The courts commonly look to legislation to define their actions rather than to the principles of the common law or the rights of the citizens as owners of our legal system. If the process of legislation has been completed, the courts will generally apply the law as passed and appear reluctant to further challenge it, even where it accomplishes damages to citizens rather than delivering justice services. A law has to be pretty obvious in its denial of citizen rights before a modern court will even entertain a challenge to it. When you buy a major appliance, a vehicle or a real property, then things get more complicated and contracts tend to be written. One of the reasons for this is the interaction that is ancillary to the sale. Dorothy buys a clothes washer and like other major appliances, it comes with delivery and installation. The product that is sold is more than a piece of mechanical equipment for it is only useful as it is set in place and connections made to assure that it is operable. Dorothy also buys a vehicle and there are requirements for acceptance of the seller is to protect himself from claims of mistake in what he sells. She needs financing support to make the purchase and there are legal requirements for vehicles that will use public streets. If Dorothy buys a home, the sale will not be complete until there is a recording and possibly the delivery of a deed that has been issued by some element of government. The various legal requirements for completing a complex sale are generally known to the seller who prepares the paperwork suitable to assure that the object of the sale gets effectively to the seller's possession and ownership. Only then is the seller confident that the payment is really his. I was a minor part of a company that had been hired to provide ships radar and military training to the Saudi government and that was part of a larger contract between the United States and Saudi government to provide them with an upgraded Navy. The paperwork that I saw just for this radar system was quite extensive and included the interface with military weapons from an Italian manufacturer that would use the radar to perform high-speed operation of the ship's weapons systems. The U.S. Navy had responsibility to manage the contract that pulled all this together and caused the assembly and delivery of the hardware and military training for those who would be expected to use it. Formal written agreements are necessary to all parties in such massive endeavors. It is how each partner to the project can know that their interaction with others and can track the progress of other related elements in the larger efforts so that their efforts can be coordinated. The legal challenge was even greater than coordination in terms of agreement. The parties spoke different languages. Assurance that they came to agreement on any specific point was a challenge in itself. This depended not only on the accurate translation of documents but the cultural environment in which each language had to be understood. The chances for mistake abounded. A parent agreement might have been denied when it came to the definition of product and delivery. The written contract translated in both copies signed was not enough in itself to assure that there really was no serious mistake in what was written and translated. Handling those documents in international dealings is even more complicated when there may be two or more legal systems involved that would approach the documentation differently. And then there is the potential for legal involvement based in equity. This can occur when there are unique objects that are to be the basis for contract. The business that agrees to install a heating and cooling system in a new home construction may well be given the contract on its own reputation. That trust relation has become an element of the agreement and the specific company cannot subcontract to another company to do the work without breaching that part of making and making them liable for problems that arise because their contractor doesn't do what they were expected to do. If the subject is training someone to ski, the skills of the instructor as an educator and skier are part of the agreement. If the subject is a unique lawn declaration, the skill of the artist is part of the agreement. If the subject is an adoption, a specific child being adopted is part of the agreement. There are no legal substitutes for what is agreed and this leads to performances that fail if a substitute is even offered. The offer of one party to exchange a promise delivery for another is an offer of a new contract and the one who has offered that exchange does not have to accept it but can treat it as a breach of the contract in existing. This is a common element for artists who publicly present the results of their efforts. It is not only the artist on commission to provide a statue or painting, but performing artists, signing a contract, performing concert or at some event. Their breach may be more than simple damages and loss of income while some of the risk is always on the one who would purchase such things due to the human nature of delivery. There are elements of contract that are not healed by simple payment of damages. The modern exception seems mostly to arise in the intentional avoidance of constitutionally mandated limits on government where the government is forbidden to pass laws promoting or establishing religion, leadership is acted through the courts to deny that the government can have any expression of religious leaning of the people but ignores the same to give support to the religious leanings of minority groups. It is fascinating to observe the mental gymnastics and political posturing that is required to accomplish the abuse of the majority. There is a direct ban on laws that would interfere with the obligations of contract and it is found in the tenth section of the first article. This section addresses bans on states so strong as to require federal intervention to prevent even the states from acting in violation. Adding an external obligation to pay sales tax on the buyer and on the obligation to collect and deliver sales tax on the seller is an open and obvious violation that the federal government seems to support and that U.S. courts permit. Most recently, there is a federal law mandating that citizens procure a contract matter requiring personal signature contracts, health insurance that meets legislated and regulated standards. The courts, true to their support of the sovereignty of government over citizens, have engaged in legal gymnastics to find some way to permit this legislation to be given effect. It is notable that the offending law requires payment of a fine for non-compliance or are we really addressing some sort of conditional taxation which is also forbidden as unequal protection of the law. All this to support the government order demanding that citizens sign a contract. The sovereign citizen understanding is subject to agency. If you have to order people to do it, it is not something that people support. It is then not serving any valid public purpose, recognized by we the people and we are the only party in interest. Contracts arise from trust relations. Performance contracts have some end result that defines a successful completion of the contract. This includes most barter and sales arrangements which are so common that they are only written when ancillary matters take on importance. The limits that the Constitution puts on interfering with contracts have been flagrantly violated with the collusion of the public court systems. Taxing commercial transactions always adds an obligation to the commercial contracts and is always in open violation of constitutional bans.