Perspectives on the Uniform Commercial Code

Book excerpt: Now published in a revised second edition, Perspectives on the Uniform Commercial Code remains the sole anthology of seminal readings on the history, jurisprudence, personalities, controversies, and current scholarship on the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). Intended as a supplemental teaching tool for law school courses on commercial law, this anthology is designed to pique the interests of law students by presenting the UCC as a living, experimental text with economic and political dimensions. The format -- short and focused excerpts followed by a single discussion question -- is specifically designed to hold students' attention and to generate classroom discussion. The anthology begins with a useful introduction to the UCC, and then provides key readings on the history and drafting of the UCC, including selections from its principal drafters and its critics. The anthology has separate chapters on such topics as: how the UCC was enacted; the personality and vision of Karl Llewellyn; the jurisprudence of the UCC; how to interpret the official text and comments; debates surrounding the federalization of commercial law; whether the amendment process is flawed; the limits of property and commoditization; and a look at cutting-edge scholarship on the UCC. Students and professors alike will find the anthology a wonderful complement to the standard materials assigned in commercial law classes. "Carolina Academic Press should be congratulated for producing this wonderful volume. This is a winner!" -- Bimonthly Review of Law Books, Nov/Dec 2002, on the first edition "These readings offer student readers a variety of lenses through which to understand the UCC, not as a dogmatic recitation of the dictates of commercial law, but rather as a contestable, socially constructed set of rules about which arguments can be made and from which alternative commercial worlds might be created." -- Harvard Law Review