In Amos Binney v. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to decide whether a contract between two parties could be enforced when one party had not performed their part of the agreement. In this case, Amos Binney had contracted with The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company to build a canal in exchange for payment from them. However, after completing his work on the canal he did not receive any money from The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company as promised in their contract. As such, Mr. Binney brought suit against them seeking damages for breach of contract due to non-payment by The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company for services rendered under their agreement. Ultimately, it was decided that Mr. Binney should be compensated according to what he would have been paid if they had fulfilled their contractual obligations; thus affirming that contracts must be honored even when one party has failed to perform its duties as agreed upon by both sides originally entering into said agreement

In the case of Amos Binney v. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, Justice McLean delivered a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the plaintiff had not been given due process under the law. He noted that while it was true that Congress had granted exclusive jurisdiction to Maryland over certain lands along the canal, this did not mean they could deny citizens their right to bring suit against companies operating on those lands. Furthermore, he argued that even if Congress had intended for such suits to be barred from state courts, then it should have made its intentions clear in order for them to be legally binding. In conclusion, Justice McLean believed that since no such language existed within any relevant legislation or other legal documents pertaining to this case, then Amos Binney should have been allowed his day in court and thus denied justice by being prevented from doing so without due process of law.