based on public policy considerations only legal contracts or legal contractual provisions can be enforced there is no remedy to enforce illegal contractual agreements there are two possible consequences that follow from illegality the first possible consequence is that an entire illegal contract is void the second possibility applies to contracts that are not illegal in their entirety but rather only contain one or more illegal provisions in these cases a court has the option to eliminate the illegal provisions or to rewrite them in order to make them legal an example of the latter approach would be a court that adjusts the interest rate in a loan agreement when the interest that has been agreed is in excess of what is allowed by law which approach is better should a court void an entire provision that contains illegal content or simply opt to change these provisions so that they conform to the law rewriting clauses is helpful in that it still leaves the parties with a provision that they wanted to agree on albeit with a different or adjusted content however if the general approach would be to always adjust illegal clauses instead of invalidating them this could also incentivize a party to try and use illegal provisions in their contracts this is true because they know that a court will only rewrite the illegal provision so as to make it legal but it will not eliminate the clause entirely as a result the party using an illegal clause has nothing to lose if the party uses for an example an illegally high interest rate it will get away with it as long as the other party doesn't bring a lawsuit and even if the other party brings a lawsuit the worst that can happen is that the interest rate will be adjusted from a policy perspective therefore it might be preferable for courts to always strike illegal provisions in their entirety you