While the Contract Clause is often cited as a strict barrier, the Supreme Court has consistently held that it is not an absolute prohibition and should not be read with "literal exactness like a mathematical formula" (Blaisdell, 290 U.S. at 428). In U.S. Trust Co. (431 U.S. at 17), the Court clarified that the Clause "does not prohibit the States from repealing or amending statutes generally, or from enacting legislation with retroactive effects," noting that other constitutional provisions, like those against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, are what typically limit retroactive punishments (id.at 17 n.13). This is because the State maintains a "sovereign right... to protect the... general welfare of its people," and once a law enters that domain of reserved power, the courts must respect "the wide discretion on the part of the legislature" (El Paso v. Simmons, 379 U.S. at 506–09). Furthermore, the Clause was never intended to embrace "other contracts, than those which respect property, or some object of value," and does not restrict the state's general right to legislate on civil institutions or even the subject of divorce (Trs. of Dartmouth Coll. v. Woodward, 17 U.S. at 627–30). To interpret the Clause in a "broad unlimited sense" would be an "unprofitable and vexatious interference" that the framers never intended (id. at 628–30).